Top 200 Octavia E. Butler Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 5

151. “From what I’ve read,” I said to him, “the world goes crazy every three or four decades. The trick is to survive until it goes sane again.”

— Octavia E. Butler

152. “There are times when I wish I believed in hell – other than the hells we make for one another, I mean.”

— Octavia E. Butler

153. “Yet God has been here all along, shaping us and being shaped by us in no particular way or in too many ways at once like an amoeba – or like a cancer. Chaos.”

— Octavia E. Butler

154. “Let go of me.” It smoothed its tentacles again. “Be grateful, Joe. I’m not going to let go of you.”

— Octavia E. Butler

155. “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. We.”

— Octavia E. Butler

156. “You controlled both animals and people by controlling their reproduction – controlling it absolutely.”

— Octavia E. Butler

157. “Power came the way a child came – with agony.”

— Octavia E. Butler

158. “It was literally the best food she had tasted in two hundred and fifty years.”

— Octavia E. Butler

159. “For Lilith, it was a comfortable, mindless activity that gave her something to do when there was nothing she could do about her situation.”

— Octavia E. Butler

160. “Good stories are good stories, no matter how they’re categorized.”

— Octavia E. Butler

161. “Akin rested his chin on Iriarte’s shoulder and savored the strange pale scents – all pale now.”

— Octavia E. Butler

162. “When I was older, I decided that getting a rejection slip was like being told your child was ugly. You got mad and didn’t believe a word of it. Besides, look at all the really ugly literary children out there in the world being published and doing fine!”

— Octavia E. Butler

163. “I sat where I was, more depressed than ever, hating the whole hopeless, stupid business and wondering whether the human species would ever grow up enough to learn to communicate without using fists of one kind or another.”

— Octavia E. Butler

164. “Is a pea cut in half one wounded thing or two?”

— Octavia E. Butler

165. “I might not have believed this if a Human had said it. 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 we did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though we had stolen thoughts from their minds.”

— Octavia E. Butler

166. “His mistake was in seeing her as a young girl. She was already a missile, armed and targeted.”

— Octavia E. Butler

167. “The thing is, we hear gunfire so much that we don’t hear it.”

— Octavia E. Butler

168. “Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.”

— Octavia E. Butler

169. “Twenty-five or thirty words are supposed to be enough in a news bullet to explain either a war or an unusual set of Christmas lights. Bullets are cheap and full of big dramatic pictures. Some bullets are true virtuals that allow people to experience – safely – hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and mass murder. Hell of a kick.”

— Octavia E. Butler

170. “Once he’s made everyone who isn’t like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems he knows they didn’t cause. That’s easier than trying to fix the problems.”

— Octavia E. Butler

171. “Clay was slowly deciding to kill himself. It was slow because, in spite of everything Clay did not want to die. He was just becoming less and less able to tolerate the pain of living.”

— Octavia E. Butler

172. “It seems inevitable that people who can’t read are going to lean more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should. And no doubt the new picture ballots on the nets will give Jarret an even greater advantage.”

— Octavia E. Butler

173. “Praying makes people feel better even when there’s no action they can take,” he said. “I used to think that was all God was good for – to help people like my mother stand what they had to stand.”

— Octavia E. Butler

174. “I do what I can,′ I said. ‘When I can do more, I will. You know that.”

— Octavia E. Butler

175. “But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I’d kill myself.”

— Octavia E. Butler

176. “A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of super-person. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of.”

— Octavia E. Butler

177. “No one is who we think they are,” I said. “That’s what we get for not being telepathic.”

— Octavia E. Butler

178. “Twenty-five or thirty words are supposed to be enough in a news bullet to explain either a war or an unusual set of Christmas lights.”

— Octavia E. Butler

179. “Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.” He.”

— Octavia E. Butler

180. “I can’t unfind you,” he said.”

— Octavia E. Butler

181. “Gather information. Seek weakness. Watch, wait, and do what you have to to stay alive!”

— Octavia E. Butler

182. “I’m sorry that astronaut will be brought back from her own chosen heaven.”

— Octavia E. Butler

183. “As a country, we’ve given up our birthright for even less than bread and pottage. We’ve given it up for nothing – although I’m sure some people somewhere are richer now.”

— Octavia E. Butler

184. “She glanced at him. “What gods do you respect?” “None.” “And why not?” “I help myself,” he said.”

— Octavia E. Butler

185. “Did she struggle for life only out of habit, or because some part of her still hoped that there was something worth living for?”

— Octavia E. Butler

186. “You are a good man,” she had observed contentedly. “And it has been too long since I had this.” He was surprised.”

— Octavia E. Butler

187. “I’ve noticed that people who have a little bit of power tend to use it.”

— Octavia E. Butler

188. “A leader Most will follow, Or a tyrant Most fear.”

— Octavia E. Butler

189. “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 E. Butler

190. “But we can rig the game in our own favor if we understand that God exists to be shaped, and will be shaped, with or without our forethought, with or without our intent.”

— Octavia E. Butler

191. “I wonder what a badge is, other than a license to steal.”

— Octavia E. Butler

192. “She wasn’t writing romance or feel-good novels,” mystery author Walter Mosley said. “She was writing very difficult, brilliant work.”

— Octavia E. Butler

193. “Yes,” he said, “intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike.”

— Octavia E. Butler

194. “The problem, of course, with throwing people away is that they don’t go away. They stay in the society that turned its back on them. And whether that society likes it or not, they find all sorts of things to do.”

— Octavia E. Butler

195. “I would like to give them a grove of oak trees, I said. Trees are better than stone- life commemorating life.”

— Octavia E. Butler

196. “I was always a doubter when it came to religion. How irrational of me, then, to love a zealot. But then, both love and zealotry are irrational states of mind.”

— Octavia E. Butler

197. “All prayers are to Self And, in one way or another, All prayers are answered. Pray, But beware. Your desires, Whether or not you achieve them Will determine who you become.”

— Octavia E. Butler

198. “We’re an adaptable species,” she said, refusing to be stopped, “but it’s wrong to inflict suffering just because your victim can endure it.” “Learn.”

— Octavia E. Butler

199. “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. Forget talent. If you have it, fine. Use it. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter. As habit is more dependable than inspiration, continued learning is more dependable than talent.”

— Octavia E. Butler

200. “In spite of your loss and pain, you aren’t alone. You still have people who care about you and want you to be all right. You still have family.”

— Octavia E. Butler