“Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin's World War II books - a book of excerpts from the recollections of concentration camp survivors. Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation. As though the Germans… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
“This is the biggest lot of abolitionist trash I ever saw.” “No it isn’t,” I said. “That book wasn’t even written until a century after slavery was abolished.” “Then why the hell are they still complaining about it?” — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
“It’s too easy to follow bad but attractive leaders, embrace pleasurable but destructive habits, ignore looming disaster because maybe it won’t happen after all—or… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
“He rubbed his head again. 'Five years is longer than it sounds. So much longer.” — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
“Se sono tuoi, stabilisci tu le regole. A chi importa che cosa ne pensano i giocattoli? Spazza via l'intera famiglia di un giocattolo, poi… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
I don't know how much of a market there is for space opera. Just because it's in the movies doesn't mean magazines are buying… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
“Freedom is dangerous but it's precious, too. You can't just throw it away or let it slip away. You can't sell it for bread… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
“Sometimes I wrote things because I couldn't say them, couldn't sort out my feelings about them, couldn't keep them bottled inside me.” — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
“In the book of Job, God says he made everything and he knows everything so no one has any right to question what he does with any of it. Okay. That works. That Old Testament God doesn’t violate the way things are now. But that God sounds a lot like Zeus—a super-powerful man, playing with his toys the way my… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share
“But there’s no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you.” — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
“After a few years of watching the human species make things unnecessarily difficult for itself I have little hope that it will do anything… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
“Self is. Self is body and bodily perception. Self is thought, memory, belief. Self creates. Self destroys. Self learns, discovers, becomes. Self shapes. Self… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
At school I was always taller than the rest of my class, and because I was an only child, I was comfortable with adults… — Octavia E. Butler Copy Share Image
