Octavia Butler Quotes & Sayings

Souls! When have you seen your own soul - that you're so certain you have one? — Octavia Butler

The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way. — Octavia Butler

It's interesting how many science fiction writers get going when they are very young. I was on a program with Greg Bear and he mentioned that he had gotten started writing when he was eight. And I began writing when I was 10. I think we're influenced by the stuff, we find it and we love it and we're influenced by it ... I know I collected my first rejection slip when I was 13, and I went on collecting them for a long time after that. — Octavia Butler

It's when people begin using their religion as just a way of getting power over other people that scares me. I'm afraid that's what's going on in a lot of cases right now. When people deliberately tell lies, Creationism for instance, and pretend, "Oh, it's not really religion." I mean they know they're lying, and yet they're the religious people. There's something wrong there. — Octavia Butler

Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers. — Octavia Butler

Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe. To us, that makes it the most powerful reality, and just another word for God. Earthseed: The Books of the Living Lauren Oya Olamina — Octavia Butler

All religions are ultimately cargo cults. Adherents perform required rituals, follow specific rules, and expect to be supernaturally gifted with desired rewards long life, honor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth, victory over opponents, immortality after death, any desired rewards. — Octavia Butler

Religion is a dangerous prod, because it can always be misused and get out of hand, but it's useful for keeping people on the straight and narrow. — Octavia Butler

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest. — Octavia Butler

Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility. — Octavia Butler

Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage. — Octavia Butler

What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way. — Octavia Butler

We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life. — Octavia Butler

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. — Octavia Butler

Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease — Octavia Butler

Slavery is a long slow process of dulling. — Octavia Butler

There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you. — Octavia Butler

Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn't find anything to complain about. — Octavia Butler

I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership. — Octavia Butler

I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal. — Octavia Butler

A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows. — Octavia Butler

The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing. — Octavia Butler

I think climbing mountains or buildings or whatever has been a really good metaphor for finishing my work. Because no matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can't possibly do this, somehow you do. — Octavia Butler

On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they seemed to move around each other. I wanted to play around with that. — Octavia Butler

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, ongoing Change. — Octavia Butler

Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to. — Octavia Butler

I talked to members of my family, and did some personal research that didn't really have anything to do with the time and place I was writing about, but that gave me a feeling of the experience of being black in a time and place where it was very difficult to be black. — Octavia Butler

Most of what I do is science fiction. Some of the things I do are fantasy. I don't like the labels, they're marketing tools, and I certainly don't worry about them when I'm writing. They are also inhibiting factors; you wind up not getting read by certain people, or not getting sold to certain people because they think they know what you write. You say science fiction and everybody thinks Star Wars or Star Trek. — Octavia Butler

There's no narcotic like exhaustion. — Octavia Butler

I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that. — Octavia Butler

Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave. — Octavia Butler

A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think you're communicating. It's so easy as a young writer to think you're been very clear when in fact you haven't. — Octavia Butler

Life is getting better, but that won't stop a war if politicians and business people decide it's to their advantage to have one. — Octavia Butler

I can write my own stories and I can write myself in. — Octavia Butler

Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops or classes - a workshop is where you do actually get feedback on your work, not just something where you go and sit for a day. — Octavia Butler

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your own. You're alone, and there's no one to help you. — Octavia Butler

You are horror and beauty in rare combination. — Octavia Butler

I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing, — Octavia Butler

Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn't vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach. — Octavia Butler

So fantasy was fine early on, and when I discovered science fiction, I was very happy with it, because my first interest in science fiction came with an interest in astronomy. — Octavia Butler

No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities. — Octavia Butler

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it. — Octavia Butler

A victim of God may, Through learning adaption, Become a partner of God, A victim of God may, Through forethought and planning, Become a shaper of God. Or a victim of God may, Through shortsightedness and fear, Remain God's victim, God's plaything, God's prey. — Octavia Butler

The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. — Octavia Butler

Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. — Octavia Butler

I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing. — Octavia Butler

Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up. — Octavia Butler

But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical. — Octavia Butler

We need the stars ... We need purpose! We need the image the Destiny to take root among the stars gives us of ourselves as a purposeful, growing species. We need to become the adult species that the Destiny can help us become! If we're to be anything other than smooth dinosaurs who evolve, specialize and die, we need the stars ... When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness. — Octavia Butler

Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be. — Octavia Butler

Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. — Octavia Butler

I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early. — Octavia Butler

If there's any single talent a writer needs, it's persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell. — Octavia Butler

Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere. — Octavia Butler

The only lasting truth is change. God is change. — Octavia Butler

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy. — Octavia Butler

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time. — Octavia Butler

No ... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly. — Octavia Butler

We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose. — Octavia Butler

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. — Octavia Butler

And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing. — Octavia Butler

While Fledging is a different type of book, The Parable series serve as cautionary tales. I wrote the Parable books because of the direction of the country. You can call it save the world fiction, but it clearly doesn't save anything. — Octavia Butler