Top 57 Octavia Butler Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.
Octavia Butler
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status.
Octavia Butler
#7. Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn't vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach.
Octavia Butler
#9. Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.
Octavia Butler
#10. Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.
Octavia Butler
#11. No ... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.
Octavia Butler
#12. 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
#13. Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.
Octavia Butler
#15. 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
#16. We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.
Octavia Butler
#17. 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
#18. I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.
Octavia Butler
#20. I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership.
Octavia Butler
#22. But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical.
Octavia Butler
#23. 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
#24. The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.
Octavia Butler
#25. I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early.
Octavia Butler
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#32. 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
#33. I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.
Octavia Butler
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. Souls! When have you seen your own soul - that you're so certain you have one?
Octavia Butler
#38. 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
#39. There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
Octavia Butler
#40. We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.
Octavia Butler
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.
Octavia Butler
#44. Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease
Octavia Butler
#45. I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.
Octavia Butler
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
Octavia Butler
#50. 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
#52. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
Octavia Butler
#53. Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn't find anything to complain about.
Octavia Butler
#54. Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.
Octavia Butler
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.
Octavia Butler
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
