Octavia Butler Quotes
-
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
→ -
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
→ -
Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.
→ -
Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn't find anything to complain about.
→ -
Consider We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.
→ -
Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
There's no narcotic like exhaustion.
→ -
Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
Beware: Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.
→ -
I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.
→ -
Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn't vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach.
→ -
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. And once you did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though you had stolen thoughts from their minds.
→ -
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.
→ -
Most of what I do is science fiction. Some of the things I do are fantasy. I don't like the labels, they're marketing tools, and I certainly don't worry about them when I'm writing. They are also inhibiting factors; you wind up not getting read by certain people, or not getting sold to certain people because they think they know what you write. You say science fiction and everybody thinks Star Wars or Star Trek.
→ -
You are horror and beauty in rare combination.
→ -
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.
→ -
I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.
→ -
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.
→ -
Kindness eases change Love quiets fear
→ -
The essentials are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.
→ -
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.
→ -
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
→ -
The big talent is persistence.
→ -
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
→ -
I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership.
→
Related Authors
-
James Tiptree Jr. Author -
Toni Morrison Novelist -
Toni Cade Bambara Author -
Margaret Atwood Poet -
Harlan Ellison Writer -
Joanna Russ Writer -
Tananarive Due Author -
Samuel R. Delany Author -
Cory Doctorow Blogger -
Connie Willis Writer -
Nnedi Okorafor Writer -
Stephen King Author -
Jack Williamson Fiction writer -
Alice Walker Author -
Nalo Hopkinson Fiction writer -
E. Lynn Harris Author -
Ursula K. Le Guin Author -
Audre Lorde Writer -
N.K. Jemisin Writer -
Zora Neale Hurston Anthropologist