Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to look down on—a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed and punished for all or any troubles. We need this lowest class as much as we need equals to team with and to compete against and superiors to look to for direction and help.

We collected all the bones we could find, and yesterday, Natividad wrapped them in a shawl that she had knitted years ago. It was the most beautiful thing she owned. "A thing like that should serve the living," Bankole said when she offered it. "You are living," Natividad said. "I like you. I wish I could have met your sister.

Praying makes people feel better even when there's no action they can take," he said. "I used to think that was all God was good for—to help people like my mother stand what they had to stand.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.

Could a creature who had to look upon ordinary people literally as food and shelter ever understand how strongly those people valued life?

To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.

From what I've read," I said to him, "the world goes crazy every three or four decades. The trick is to survive until it goes sane again.

Life alone is enough. I find it … more exciting and encouraging than I can explain, more important than I can explain. There is life out there. There are living worlds just a few light years away, and the United States is busy drawing back from even our nearby dead worlds, the moon and Mars. I understand why they are, but I wish they weren't.

I can't unfind you," he said.

My ancestors in this hemisphere were, by law, chattel slaves. In the U.S., they were chattel slaves for two and a half centuries—at least 10 generations. I used to think I knew what that meant. Now I realize that I can't begin to imagine the many terrible things that it must have done to them. How did they survive it all and keep their humanity? Certainly, they were never intended to keep it, just as we weren't.

A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows.

Can you find your way home, Lilith?" "We're an adaptable species," she said, refusing to be stopped, "but it's wrong to inflict suffering just because your victim can endure it.

I'm sorry that astronaut will be brought back from her own chosen heaven.

He wasn't a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.

I do what I can,' I said. 'When I can do more, I will. You know that.

Would you like a tuna-salad sandwich?' 'Yes,' God said. 'Thank you.

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.

I couldn't let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn't leave people quite whole.

I wouldn't want to give up being what I am," I said. "I … I want to be ooloi. I really want it. And I wish I didn't. How can I want to cause the family so much trouble?" "You want to be what you are. That's healthy and right for you. What we do about it is our decision, our responsibility. Not yours." I

Grief was grief, she thought. It was pain and loss and despair—an abrupt end where there should have been a continuing.

God is Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. God is Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay— God is Change. Beware: God exists to shape And to be shaped.

Sometimes people say I look grim or angry. Better to have them think that than know the truth. Better to have them think anything than know just how easy it is to hurt me.

Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism.

For Lilith, it was a comfortable, mindless activity that gave her something to do when there was nothing she could do about her situation.