Top 200 Octavia E. Butler Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “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

154. “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

155. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

157. “I can’t unfind you,” he said.”

— Octavia E. Butler

158. “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

159. “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

160. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

162. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

164. “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

165. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

171. “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

172. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

175. “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

176. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

178. “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

179. “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

180. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

183. “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

184. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

186. “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

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. “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

189. “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

190. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

192. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

194. “I found that I couldn’t muster any belief in a literal heaven or hell, anyway. I thought the best we could all do was to look after one another and clean up the various hells we’ve made right here on earth.”

— Octavia E. Butler

195. “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

196. “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

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

— Octavia E. Butler

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

— Octavia E. Butler

199. “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

200. “Pleasure is rare, pain is plentiful, and, delusional or not, it hurts like hell.”

— Octavia E. Butler