Top 200 Octavia E. Butler Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Power came the way a child came – with agony.”

— Octavia E. Butler

152. “There are so many interesting times we could have visited.”

— Octavia E. Butler

153. “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

154. “We’re survivors, Len. You are. I am. Most of Georgetown is. All of Acorn was. We’ve been slammed around in all kinds of ways. We’re all wounded. We’re healing as best we can. And, no, we’re not normal. Normal people wouldn’t have survived what we’ve survived. If we were normal we’d be dead.”

— Octavia E. Butler

155. “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

156. “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

157. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

160. “I can’t unfind you,” he said.”

— Octavia E. Butler

161. “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

162. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

164. “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

165. “Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe.”

— Octavia E. Butler

166. “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

167. “Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments – the ones abolishing slavery and guaranteeing citizenship rights – still exist, but they’ve been so weakened by custom, by Congress and the various state legislatures, and by recent Supreme Court decisions that they don’t much matter.”

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

170. “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

171. “Do you think our world is coming to an end?” Dad asked, and with no warning at all, I almost started crying. I had all I could do to hold it back. What I thought was, “No, I think your world is coming to an end, and maybe you with it.”

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

173. “God is Change And hidden within Change Is surprise, delight, Confusion, pain, Discovery, loss, Opportunity, and growth. As always, God exists To shape And to be shaped.”

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

176. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

178. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

181. “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

182. “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

183. “We can, Each of us, Do the impossible As Long as we can convince ourselves That it has been done before.”

— Octavia E. Butler

184. “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

185. “Grief was grief, she thought. It was pain and loss and despair – an abrupt end where there should have been a continuing.”

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

187. “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

188. “Earthseed deals with ongoing reality, not with supernatural authority figures. Worship is no good without action. With action, it’s only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, eases your mind.”

— Octavia E. Butler

189. “In six years, she had gone from nothing to nothing.”

— Octavia E. Butler

190. “Entropy, the idea that the natural flow of heat is from something hot to something cool – not the other way – so that the universe itself is cooling down, running down, dissipating its energy.”

— Octavia E. Butler

191. “Darkness Gives shape to the light As light Shapes the darkness. Death Gives shape to life As life Shapes death. The universe And God Share this wholeness, Each Defining the other. God Gives shape to the universe As the universe Shapes God.”

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

193. “Human purpose isn’t what you say it is or what I say it is. It’s what your biology says it is – what your genes say it is.”

— Octavia E. Butler

194. “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

195. “And the only way to prove to yourself you have power is to use it.”

— Octavia E. Butler

196. “The essentials,” I answered, “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 E. Butler

197. “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

198. “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

199. “I saw a woman die in childbirth once,” he said. I nodded. “I never saw it, but I kept hearing about it happening. It was pretty common back then, I guess. Poor medical care or none at all.” “No, medical care had nothing to do with the case I saw. This woman’s master strung her up by her wrists and beat her until the baby came out of her – dropped onto the ground.”

— Octavia E. Butler

200. “Beware: At war or at peace, more people die of unenlightened self interest than of any other disease.”

— Octavia E. Butler