Octavia E. Butler

“Writing is difficult. You do it all alone without encouragement and without any certainty that you'll ever be published or paid or even that you'll be able to finish the particular work you've begun. It isn't easy to persist amid all that. [...] Sometimes when I'm interviewed, the interviewer either compliments me on my 'talent', my 'gift' or asks me how I discovered it. [...] I used to struggle to answer this politely, to explain that I didn't believe much in writing talent. People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.”

“Nothing. It just finds you a lot more attractive than it does most Humans. What can you do with a beautiful woman that you can’t do with an ugly one? Nothing. It’s just a matter of preference.”

“The differences you perceive between Humans—between groups of Humans—are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments”

“Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.”

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

“Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.”

“In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.”

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

“Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.”

“Kindness eases changeLove quiets fear”

“I lost an arm on my last trip home.”

“When I meet a woman who attracts me, I prefer women,' she said. 'And when I meet a man who attracts me, I prefer men.''You mean you haven't made up your mind yet.''I mean exactly what I said. I told you you wouldn't like it. Most people who ask want me definitely on one side or the other.”

“Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.”

“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.”

“I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.”

“I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.”

“What are you?" I whispered."What are we to you?" She lay still, rested her head on her topmost coil. "You know me as no other does," she said softly. "You must decide.”

“Let them see that you trust them & let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions.Do that & they will commit their lives to you. Bully the, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, & after a while you'll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, & stifling their resentment.”

“God is Change.Earthseed: The Books of the LivingLauren Oya Olamina”

“Or it's happening because Shori is black, and racists—probably Ina racists—don't like the idea that a good part of the answer to your daytime problems is melanin.”

“If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you. There is no escape. What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be if escape were possible”

“I'm a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocial -- a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles -- a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”

“...I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away.”

“The child in each of us Knows paradise.Paradise is home.Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place,One's own people,One's own world,Knowing and known,Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise-Into growth and new community,Into vast, ongoingChange.”

“Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.”

“The essentials," I answered, "are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families, and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.”

“There is no endTo what a living worldWill demand of you.”

“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.”

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”

“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.”

“That which could hunger, could starve.”

“The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.”

“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.”

“When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.”

“I'm a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black,...an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”

“All struggles are essentially power struggles. Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles, and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.”

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

“To get along with God,Consider the consequences of your behavior.Earthseed: The Books of the Living”

“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.”

“All that you touchYou Change.All that you ChangeChanges you.The only lasting truthis Change.Godis Change.”

“He could not tell her that he was angry because she did not love him. Even he could not utter such foolishness. Certainly, he did not love her. He did not love anyone except perhaps Isaac and a very few of his other children. Yet he wanted Anyanwu to be like his many other women and treat him like a god in human form, competing for his attention no matter how repugnant his latest body nor even whether he might be looking for a new body. They knew he took women almost as readily as he took men. Especially, he took women who had already given him what he wanted of them--usually several children. They served him and never thought they might be his next victims. Someone else. Not them.”