Top 100 Octavia 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. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#3. I don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do.
Octavia E. Butler
#4. If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for?
Octavia E. Butler
#6. Let go of me." It smoothed its tentacles again. "Be grateful, Joe. I'm not going to let go of you.
Octavia E. Butler
#7. 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
#8. I'm an Oscar nominee. I love saying that. Whatever happens, I'm going to sing that 'I'm an Oscar nominee' part.
Octavia Spencer
#9. Mars is a rock - cold, empty, almost airless, dead. Yet it's heaven in a way. We can see it in the night sky, a whole other world, but too nearby, too close within the reach of the people who've made such a hell of life here on Earth.
Octavia E. Butler
#10. Let's just say that I have a tendency if I am uncomfortable in a situation to speak my mind.
Octavia Spencer
#11. You controlled both animals and people by controlling their reproduction - controlling it absolutely.
Octavia E. Butler
#12. Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.
Octavia Butler
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. My god," Bankole said. "This country has slipped back two hundred years." "Things were better when I was little," Emery said. "My mother always said they would get better again. Good times would come back. She said they always did. My father would shake his head and not say anything.
Octavia E. Butler
#16. These things frighten people. It's best not to talk about them." "But, Dad, that's like ... like ignoring a fire in the living room because we're all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.
Octavia E. Butler
#17. I was always a closet lover of acting. My mom was very practical. She never, ever restricted our dreams, always told us we could do or be anything. Then I said, 'Maybe I want to be an actor'. And she said, 'Maybe not that'.
Octavia Spencer
#18. no one had been able to give him a reason why people who had excellent reasons to suppose they would destroy themselves if they did a certain thing chose to do that thing anyway.
Octavia E. Butler
#19. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status.
Octavia Butler
#20. I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.
Octavia E. Butler
#21. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#23. Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn't vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach.
Octavia Butler
#24. You know, bigotry isn't relevant to just the South. It never was. But I'm very grateful that I don't know what it's like from experience.
Octavia Spencer
#25. to be aware of a place where blackness was not a mark of slavery.
Octavia E. Butler
#27. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#28. Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.
Octavia Butler
#29. Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.
Octavia Butler
#30. Now I want to work with Octavia Spencer, because I met her and she's really funny.
Isabelle Fuhrman
#31. The differences you perceive between Humans - between groups of Humans - are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments
Octavia E. Butler
#32. She means the devil with people who say you're anything but what you are.
Octavia E. Butler
#33. I was starstruck and sweat a lot when I met Oprah Winfrey and tried to hug her. Because when you think you know people when you see them from your couch.
Octavia Spencer
#35. The norm is white, apparently, in the view of people who see things in that way. For them, the only reason you would introduce a black character is to introduce this kind of abnormality. Usually, it's because you're telling a story about racism or at least about race.
Octavia E. Butler
#36. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#37. I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking.
Octavia E. Butler
#38. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#39. No ... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.
Octavia Butler
#40. Would you like a tuna-salad sandwich?'
'Yes,' God said. 'Thank you.
Octavia E. Butler
#41. One thing I've learned is be comfortable in your skin, and more importantly, be comfortable in your shoes.
Octavia Spencer
#42. Was it possible that Octavia had misjudged her?
What was he thinking? Of course, it was possible. Octavia was a dear, but she was nineteen years old and thinking of Octavia. The last thing she wanted in her life was a staggeringly beautiful rival who was not conveniently evil.
Julia Quinn
#44. I prefer doing interviews where people don't have to interpret what you say. I'm going to be real honest.
Octavia Spencer
#45. I think if I weren't so squeamish, I would have been some sort of forensic analyst. And I can't do anything with a microscope, because then I start thinking about the world of germs around us.
Octavia Spencer
#46. The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren't any other kind ...
Octavia E. Butler
#47. 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
#48. And then Alec had a providient thought. "D'you want my sister?"
"Octavia!" Hugh gasped at him. "isn't she twelve?"
"She's nineteen."
"I can't marry her. I'd keep picturing her as twelve.
Julia Quinn
#49. There is no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you.
Octavia E. Butler
#50. I'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer.
Octavia E. Butler
#51. The assembly of warriors stands, faces now smeared with blood, and together we recite the names of our chief enemies. "Karnus au Bellona, Aja au Grimmus, Imperator Tiberius au Bellona, Scipia au Falthe, Octavia au Lune, Agrippina au Julii, and Cassius au Bellona. These are wanted lives." In
Pierce Brown
#52. I'll say that I don't think you can throw a stone and not come in contact with someone who knows someone or has problems with substance abuse.
Octavia Spencer
#53. Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.
Octavia Butler
#54. Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that person's resolve.
Octavia E. Butler
#55. I was not a Girl Scout, but I try to be very prepared. I triple-Spanx!
Octavia Spencer
#57. why can't I do what others have done - ignore the obvious. Live a normal life. It's hard enough just to do that in this world.
Octavia E. Butler
#58. Do you remember little Zoe Octavia Lexham?' he said.
His aunt cast her pale blue gaze in the direction of the great chandelier, as though that was where she kept her memory. 'Zoe Octavia,' she said.
Loretta Chase
#59. I was a production assistant. I saw what people who are full of themselves are like - another reason not to lose your humility! I have a mouth on me so I wasn't the best P.A.
Octavia Spencer
#60. 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
#61. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#62. I'm not a fan of 'Gone With the Wind.' I didn't like the movie. I didn't like the book.
Octavia Spencer
#63. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#64. Shyness is shit. It isn't cute or feminine or appealing. It's torment, and it's shit.
Octavia E. Butler
#65. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#66. Every character I get to play has some element of who I am, but there's no fun in playing yourself. At least, for me, there isn't.
Octavia Spencer
#67. I'm Valerie Rye,' she said, savoring the words. 'It's all right for you to talk to me.
Octavia E. Butler
#68. Your desires, Whether or not you achieve them Will determine who you become.
Octavia E. Butler
#69. You are a good man," she had observed contentedly. "And it has been too long since I had this." He was surprised
Octavia E. Butler
#70. My race and sex had a great deal more to do with what people believed I could do than with what I actually could do.
Octavia E. Butler
#72. Intelligence is relatively new to life on Earth, but your hierarchical tendencies are ancient.
Octavia E. Butler
#73. We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.
Octavia Butler
#74. 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
#75. I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.
Octavia Butler
#76. I will be girl with claws, heart bared and bruised and wanting. I am soul-shattering wolf-howl. I am lioness and hunt. I am more and enough. I am.
Venetta Octavia
#78. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#79. I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership.
Octavia Butler
#80. The Dunns must of felt this when Tracy vanished. Crazy as they are, crazy as she was, they must
Octavia E. Butler
#81. I was always a doubter when it came to religion. How irrational of me, then, to love a zealot. But then, both love and zealotry are irrational states of mind.
Octavia E. Butler
#82. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#83. I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?'
Octavia E. Butler
#84. Sensible. Conservative and sensible and mature and *wrong*. Very much in character with Joanne.
Octavia E. Butler
#85. I want to be somebody. I mean I AM somebody, I just want to be a RICH somebody
Octavia St. Laurent
#86. 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.
Octavia E. Butler
#88. What surprised me about the Oscars was how familiar it was - because you're in the room with all these people that have inspired you from your childhood to adulthood in the film industry. It feels like you've known them all of your life.
Octavia Spencer
#89. Peeta looks at the glass again and puts it together. "You mean this will make me puke?" My prep team laughs hysterically. "Of course, so you can keep eating," says Octavia. "I've been in there twice already. Everyone does it, or else how would you have any fun at a feast?
Suzanne Collins
#90. Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun.
Octavia E. Butler
#91. Octavia Butler, of course, is brilliant and disturbing.
Sarah Zettel
#92. I have an affinity for the law. I like looking at the small type on contracts, and if I could have afforded law school, I probably would have gone.
Octavia Spencer
#93. It's meant to be pretty," whispers Octavia, and I can see the tears threatening to spill over her lashes.
Posy considers this and says matter-of-factly, "I think you'd be pretty in any color."
The tiniest of smiles forms on Octavia's lips. "Thank you.
Suzanne Collins
#94. After a few years of watching the human species make things unnecessarily difficult for itself I have little hope that it will do anything more than survive and continue its cycle of errors.
Octavia E. Butler
#95. The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.
Octavia E. Butler
#96. They don't want to hear how Octavia is different from us. They want to know how we're the same. They know what it's like to have an itch. They can imagine what it's like to be a mother. This brief encounter has changed them. Now they can identify with an octopus. They
Sy Montgomery
#99. I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant.
Octavia E. Butler
#100. Civil rights happened because youth got involved. The youth stood up and helped to break the pattern that their parents had got accustomed to living. The next generation has to take that stand for whatever it is, socially, that they are involved in.
Octavia Spencer
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