Octavia Butler
77 quotes
Biography
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction and speculative fiction author who won several awards for her works, including Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
"Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish."
"Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over."
"I can’t do it, Joachim. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. A long leash is still a leash. And Coransee will still be at the other end of it, holding on."
"He showed me his fantastic library first, and that helped me warm to him a little. A guy with a room like that in his house couldn’t be all bad."
"A pet. In pets, free will was tolerated only as long as the pet owner found it amusing."
"Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn’t find anything to complain about."
"Some of his neighbors found out what I was doing and offered him fatherly advice. It was dangerous to educate slaves, they warned. Education made blacks dissatisfied with slavery. It spoiled them for field work. The Methodist minister said it made them disobedient, made them want more than the Lord intended them to have."
"I got up to leave. There was nothing more to be said. He had asked for what he knew I could not give, and I had refused."
"Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave."
"She was too alert, too alive not to have the kind of mind that probed and reached and got her into trouble now and then."
"He was surprised when I ignored him. He is wealthy and arrogant and used to being listened to even when what he says is nonsense—as it often is."
"Short-lived people, people who could die, did not know what enemies loneliness and boredom could be."
"“You’re bright,” Lupe said to her softly. “Very bright, but stubborn. You think you can choose your realities. You can’t.”"
"They had clearly feared turn-of-the-century irrationality—religious overzealousness on one side, destructive hedonism on the other, with both heated by ideological intolerance and corporate greed."
"So he had locked her in the closet. Some of his people, ignorant and fearful, could not quite believe her illness was not contagious. Badger locked her away from them for her own safety. She had seen for herself how eager they were to get her out of their sight."
"“Yes,” he said, “intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. But your denial doesn’t matter. A cancer growing in someone’s body will go on growing in spite of denial. And a complex combination of genes that work together to make you intelligent as well as hierarchical will still handicap you whether you acknowledge it or not.”"
"Lilith might be strong enough now to handle troublemakers herself, but she did not want to do that unless she had to. It would not help the people become a community, and if they could not unite, nothing else they did would matter."
"She found more gratification in teaching one willing student than a dozen resentful ones."
"“Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.” And she had put her hand on his hair. “When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.”"
"If you don’t care about my people, why should I care about yours?"
"He thought about that for a moment, wondered what he should say. The truth or nothing. The truth."
"“Yori, Human purpose isn’t what you say it is or what I say it is. It’s what your biology says it is—what your genes say it is.”"
"I might not have believed this if a Human had said it. Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everybody had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant."
"Life was treasure. The only treasure."
"Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up."