Octavia Butler Quotes - Page 2

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

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

I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing.

...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

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.

A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.

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

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

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.

The big talent is persistence.

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 trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.

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.