Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

You are horror and beauty in rare combination. In a very real way, you've captured us, and we can't escape.

God is Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay.' We decide which aspect we embrace—and how to deal with the others.

Or maybe she just went crazy because her God was demanding too much of her. She was no Job. In real life, how many people are?

the Apocalypse" or more commonly, more bitterly, "the Pox" lasted from 2015 through 2030—a decade and a half of chaos. This

Every one knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism's insistence that nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes ("To everything there is a season"), change is part of life, of existence, of the common wisdom. But I don't believe we're dealing with all that that means. We haven't even begun to deal with it.

This is just more denial: A dumb little game of "If we don't talk about bad things, maybe they won't happen.

Every member of Earthseed learned to read and to write, and most knew at least two languages—usually Spanish and English, since those were the two most useful. Anyone who joined the group, child or adult, had to begin at once to learn these basics and to acquire a trade. Anyone who had a trade was always in the process of teaching it to someone else. My mother insisted on this, and it does seem sensible

How long does a thief stay content? And what's it like to starve?

I preached from Luke, chapter eighteen, verses one through eight: the parable of the importunate widow. It's one I've always liked. A widow is so persistent in her demands for justice that she overcomes the resistance of a judge who fears neither God nor man. She wears him down. Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn't always safe, but it's often necessary.

He said politicians turned his stomach.

Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches. Witches! In 2032! A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jehovah's Witness, or even a Catholic. A witch may also be an atheist, a "cultist," or a well-to-do eccentric.

Back into your cage, Lilith?" Jdahya asked softly.

The idea is that all nonmilitary space travel, manned and unmanned, should be privatized. "If it's worth doing at all," Donner said, "it should be done for profit, and not as a burden on the taxpayers." As though profit could be counted only as immediate financial gain.

That scares me to death sometimes—always feeling driven to do something I don't know how to do. But I'm learning as I go along.

She's neglected and lonely, and like any little kid left on her own too much, she finds ways to amuse herself.

They look at us as though we smell and they don't.

Live! That's all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don't know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won't matter if we don't survive these times.

Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.

The kids seem all right, but the adults. ... I wouldn't want to have to depend on them. Not even for little things.

Sometimes naming a thing—giving it a name or discovering its name—helps one to begin to understand it. Knowing the name of a thing and knowing what that thing is for gives me even more of a handle on it.

They took us all to Arcata to the church there. Then they made us all separate. They said we were going to have new Christian American families. They said…they said you were all dead. I believed them at first, and I didn't know what to do. But then I saw how they would lie whenever they felt like it. They would say things about us and about Acorn that were nothing but lies. Then I didn't know what to believe.

I'm getting better, but so slowly.

The man she worked for had a library—a whole big room full of books." "He let you read them?" I asked. "He didn't let me near them." Travis gave me a humorless smile. "I read them anyway. My mother would sneak them to me." Of course. Slaves did that two hundred years ago. They sneaked around and educated themselves as best they could, sometimes suffering whipping, sale, or mutilation for their efforts. "Did

Worship is no good without action. With action, it's only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, eases your mind.