Octavia Butler Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Octavia Butler

  Liars, Lying, Tyrants

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.226, Open Road Media

  147 Copy quote

• All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.

  Octavia Butler

  Change, God, Truth Is

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.7, Open Road Media

  78 Copy quote

• 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 Butler

  Inspiration, Writing, Persistence

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Bloodchild: And Other Stories”, p.128, Open Road Media

  75 Copy quote

• Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.

  Octavia Butler

  Thinking, Be Who You Are, Ought

  22 Copy quote

• We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.

  Octavia Butler

  Confidence, Climbing, Permit

  Octavia E. Butler (2011). “Bloodchild and Other Stories”, p.149, Seven Stories Press

  27 Copy quote

• 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.

  Octavia Butler

  Ignorance, Blind, Quails

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.244, Open Road Media

  78 Copy quote

• Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
  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 Butler

  Attitude, Writing, People

  30 Copy quote

• In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix First Must Burn.

  Octavia Butler

  Order, Phoenix, Ashes

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.309, Open Road Media

  58 Copy quote

• Consider We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.

  Octavia Butler

  Purpose, Born

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.432, Open Road Media

  10 Copy quote

• Kindness eases change
  Love quiets fear

  Octavia Butler

  Kindness, Ease

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.55, Open Road Media

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  Octavia Butler

  Struggle, Two, Design

  Octavia E. Butler (2017). “Earthseed: The Complete Series”, p.115, Open Road Media

  69 Copy quote

• Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

  Octavia Butler

  Best Friend, Friendship, Letting Go

  83 Copy quote

• 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.

  Octavia Butler

  Freedom, Equality, Rights

  67 Copy quote

• Ignorance
  Protects itself,
  And protected,
  Ignorance grows.

  Octavia Butler

  Ignorance, Quails, Protect

  Octavia E. Butler (1998). “Parable of the Talents: A Novel”, p.187, Seven Stories Press

  10 Copy quote

• We need the stars... We need purpose! We need the image the Destiny to take root among the stars gives us of ourselves as a purposeful, growing species. We need to become the adult species that the Destiny can help us become! If we're to be anything other than smooth dinosaurs who evolve, specialize and die, we need the stars.... When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness.

  Octavia Butler

  Stars, Fighting, Destiny

  41 Copy quote

• Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.

  Octavia Butler

  Fighting, People, Sometimes

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Sower”, p.69, Open Road Media

  42 Copy quote

• 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.

  Octavia Butler

  Writing, Persistence, Thinking

  40 Copy quote

• People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.

  Octavia Butler

  Giving Up, Writing, Persistence

  Octavia E. Butler (2011). “Bloodchild and Other Stories”, p.148, Seven Stories Press

  36 Copy quote

• The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place, One's own people, One's own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise- Into growth and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.

  Octavia Butler

  Children, Home, Should Have

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.130, Open Road Media

  35 Copy quote

• I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

  Octavia Butler

  Writing, Stories, Wanted

  49 Copy quote

• Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.

  Octavia Butler

  Intelligent, Thinking, Forever

  22 Copy quote

• 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.

  Octavia Butler

  Wall, Fiction, Hem

  26 Copy quote

• 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.

  Octavia Butler

  Mean, Civilization, Intelligence

  Octavia E. Butler (2017). “Earthseed: The Complete Series”, p.121, Open Road Media

  21 Copy quote

• There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.

  Octavia Butler

  World, Demand, Ends

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Sower”, p.154, Open Road Media

  27 Copy quote

• I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing.

  Octavia Butler

  Writing

  "Unseen Octavia E Butler stories recovered" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2014.

  18 Copy quote

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