Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

Time passed. Kevin and I became more a part of the household, familiar, accepted, accepting. That disturbed me too when I thought about it. How easily we seemed to acclimatize.

That's what Humans are, too, don't forget. People who poison each other, then disclaim all responsibility.

God is neither good nor evil, neither loving nor hating. God is Power. God is Change. We must find the rest of what we need within ourselves, in one another, in our Destiny.

To survive, know the past. Let it touch you. Then let The past Go.

nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence

As a country, we've given up our birthright for even less than bread and pottage. We've given it up for nothing—although I'm sure some people somewhere are richer now.

Stumbling across the truth isn't the same as making things up.

I'm Valerie Rye,' she said, savoring the words. 'It's all right for you to talk to me.

Why is the universe?           To shape God.           Why is God?           To shape the universe.

The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn't always safe, but it's often necessary.

You are horror and beauty in rare combination.

That's history. It happened whether it offends you or not. Quite a bit of it offends me, but there's nothing I can do about it.

even people who loved me could demand more of me than I could give—and expect their demands to be met simply because I owed them. I

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.

He led the way past the main house away from the slave cabins and other buildings, away from the small slave children who chased each other and shouted and didn't understand yet that they were slaves.

Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven't been wiped out by a plague so they're still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have changed a lot, and they'll change more. Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the climate of the world. Now they're waiting for the old days to come back.

Kevin, you don't have to beat people to treat them brutally.

At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what "everyone" is saying, doing thinking - whoever "everyone" happens to be this year.

how could they let insane people gain control of devices that could do so much harm? If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn't give him power.

Did she struggle for life only out of habit, or because some part of her still hoped that there was something worth living for?

AT LEAST THREE YEARS ago, my fathers God stopped being my God. His church stopped being my church. And yet, today, because I'm a coward, I let myself be initiated into that church. I let my father baptize me in all three names of that God who isn't mine any more. My God has another name.

but it took a plague to make some of the people realize that things could change.

There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one.

Healer that she was, creator of medicines and poisons, binder of broken bones, comforter, could she take the remnants here and build them into a man again? Doro looked at people, healthy or ill, and wondered what kind of young they could produce. Anyanwu looked at the sick—especially those with problems she had not seen before—and wondered whether she could defeat their disease.