Top 80 Octavia Butler Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix First Must Burn.”

— Octavia Butler

Featured in: Deep Quotes About Life, Transformation Quotes, Firsts Quotes

2. “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”

— Octavia Butler

Featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Adaptability Quotes, Different Quotes

3. “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

4. “Kindness eases change Love quiets fear.”

— Octavia Butler

5. “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

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

— Octavia Butler

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

7. “The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.”

— Octavia Butler

8. “We’re all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.”

— Octavia Butler

9. “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.”

— Octavia Butler

10. “If there’s any single talent a writer needs, it’s persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell.”

— Octavia Butler

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

11. “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

12. “The only lasting truth is change. God is change.”

— Octavia Butler

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

— Octavia Butler

14. “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

15. “Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.”

— Octavia Butler

16. “Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.”

— Octavia Butler

17. “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 Butler

18. “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

19. “Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.”

— Octavia Butler

20. “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

21. “Ignorance protects itself, and protected, ignorance grows.”

— Octavia Butler

22. “Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.”

— Octavia Butler

23. “Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.”

— Octavia Butler

Featured in: Fun Quotes

24. “Consider We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.”

— Octavia Butler

25. “To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior. Earthseed: The Books of the Living.”

— Octavia Butler

26. “Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease.”

— Octavia Butler

27. “Civilization is the way one’s own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.”

— Octavia Butler

28. “The big talent is persistence.”

— Octavia Butler

29. “Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you’re hurt, you’re really on your own. You’re alone, and there’s no one to help you.”

— Octavia Butler

30. “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.”

— Octavia Butler

31. “Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.”

— Octavia Butler

32. “Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status.”

— Octavia Butler

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

— Octavia Butler

34. “Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested.”

— Octavia Butler

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

— Octavia Butler

36. “You are horror and beauty in rare combination.”

— Octavia Butler

37. “To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.”

— Octavia Butler

38. “There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.”

— Octavia Butler

39. “I think climbing mountains or buildings or whatever has been a really good metaphor for finishing my work. Because no matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you do.”

— Octavia Butler

40. “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

41. “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

42. “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

43. “And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You’ll note there’s no science in it. It’s a kind of grim fantasy.”

— Octavia Butler

44. “Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.”

— Octavia Butler

45. “I lost an arm on my last trip home.”

— Octavia Butler

46. “Slavery is a long slow process of dulling.”

— Octavia Butler

47. “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 Butler

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

— Octavia Butler

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

— Octavia Butler

50. “I’m literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.”

— Octavia Butler