Octavia E. Butler
27 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.
"In order to riseFrom its own ashesA phoenixFirstMustBurn."
"All that you touchYou Change.All that you ChangeChanges you.The only lasting truthis Change.Godis Change."
"In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn."
"First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice."
"Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself."
"I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell."
"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence."
"Beware:Ignorance Protects itself.IgnorancePromotes suspicion.SuspicionEngenders fear.Fear quails,Irrational and blind,Or fear looms,Defiant and closed.Blind, closed,Suspicious, afraid,IgnoranceProtects itself,And protected,Ignorance grows."
"There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns."
"People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me."
"Power came the way a child came -- with agony."
"I began writing about power because I had so little."
"Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that person's resolve."
"If you work hard enough at something that doesn’t matter, you can forget for a while about the things that do."
"BewareAt war Or at peace,More people die Of unenlightened self-interestThan of any other disease"
"My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He'll turn thirteen in a few days - August 14 - and the thought of waiting two more years until he's 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there's nothing you can do to make it happen faster."
"My relative examined you, observed a few of your normal body cells, compared them with what it had learned from other humans most like you, and said that you had not only a cancer, but a talent for cancer."
"I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things."
"I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people."
"Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow."
"A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time."
"Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not."
"I'm very happy alone."
"You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all... That was like ignoring cancer."
"It's better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them. It's harder to scare them a second time, harder to teach them, harder to win back their trust. Best to begin by teaching."