Author of “Kindred,” and several other notable works, Octavia E. Butler, championed during her lifetime causes rooted in humanity and equality.
A multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, she became in 1995 the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Octavia E. Butler has clear messages for the different strata of human beings inhabiting the earth.
We have put together twenty five powerful quotes by this brilliant writer, as pointers to the right direction. Enjoy!
1. “I began writing about power because I had so little.”
2. “Writers use everything. We can’t help it. Whatever touches us touches our writing.”
3. “When I was a kid and read science fiction, the science fiction available for kids at the library that I went to was all boys books and you get tired of reading boys books where the girls just kind of sit on the sideline and cheer the boys on and I think one of the things I wanted to do when I began writing my own was […] being the one who’s actually doing instead of the one who’s standing off to one side watching.”
4. “Good stories are good stories, no matter how they’re categorized.”
5. “There is no end / To what a living world / Will demand of you.”
6. “That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”
7. “We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough.”
8. “I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.”
9. “All that you touch, you Change. All that you Change
Changes you. The only lasting truth
is Change. God is Change.”
10. “How much of this nonsense does he believe, I wonder, and how much does he say just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule?”
11. “As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else’s trouble.”
“Read every day and learn from what you read.”
Octavia E. Butler
12. “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.”
13. “Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of ‘wrong’ ideas.”
14. “Most Humans lose access to old memories as they acquire new ones. They know how to speak, for instance, but they don’t recall learning to speak. They keep what experience has taught them—usually—but lose the experience itself.”
15. “That’s what Humans are, too, don’t forget. People who poison each other, then disclaim all responsibility.”
16. “You controlled both animals and people by controlling their reproduction—controlling it absolutely.”
17. “If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn’t give him power.”
18. “Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.”
19. “Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant.”
20. “Could a creature who had to look upon ordinary people literally as food and shelter ever understand how strongly those people valued life?”
21. “Short-lived people, people who could die, did not know, what enemy’s loneliness and boredom could be.”
22. “When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.”
23. “Human trials are often games to see which lawyer is best able to use the law, the jury’s beliefs and prejudices, and his own theatrical ability to win.”
24. “Read every day and learn from what you read.”
25. “A long leash is still a leash.”
