Octavia Butler Quotes

“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.”

“Drowning people sometimes die fighting their rescuers.”

“Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”

“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.”

“He was like me – a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else's trouble.”

“I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”

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

“Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of "wrong" ideas.”

“Sometimes I wrote things because I couldn't say them, couldn't sort out my feelings about them, couldn't keep them bottled inside me.”

“That educated didn’t mean smart. He had a point. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom.”

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.”

“Belief initiates and guides action — or it does nothing.”

“Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction. My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction novels. The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped "the company".

I've never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that's the way it will be. That's the way it always is.”

“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.

Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.”

“Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.”

“Freedom is dangerous but it's precious, too. You can't just throw it away or let it slip away. You can't sell it for bread and pottage.”

“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.”

“My God doesn’t love me or hate me or watch over me or know me at all, and I feel no love for or loyalty to my God. My God just is.”