Octavia E. Butler Quotes

Octavia E. Butler

Profession : Writer

Birth : June 22, 1947

I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision.

Octavia E. Butler

Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not.

Octavia E. Butler

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish.

Octavia E. Butler

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 E. Butler

I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership.

Octavia E. Butler

My characters hope for better lives.

Octavia E. Butler

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 E. Butler

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

Octavia E. Butler

The big talent is persistence.

Octavia E. Butler

I'm very happy alone.

Octavia E. Butler

Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?

Octavia E. Butler

Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything.

Octavia E. Butler

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 E. Butler

I'm comfortably asocial - a hermit in the middle of a large city, a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty and drive.

Octavia E. Butler

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

Octavia E. Butler

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 E. Butler

How dull it is to have people defining you.

Octavia E. Butler

When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.

Octavia E. Butler

My race and sex had a great deal more to do with what people believed I could do than with what I actually could do.

Octavia E. Butler

Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy.

Octavia E. Butler