Octavia Butler

"I can’t do it, Joachim. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. A long leash is still a leash. And Coransee will still be at the other end of it, holding on."

"“I’ll tell you,” she said softly. “But you won’t like it.” He looked away from her. “I asked for the truth. Whether I like it or not, I have to know.”"

"He showed me his fantastic library first, and that helped me warm to him a little. A guy with a room like that in his house couldn’t be all bad."

"A pet. In pets, free will was tolerated only as long as the pet owner found it amusing."

"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm. (beginning of Prologue)"

"Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn’t find anything to complain about."

"There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one. (p124)"

"“He’s a fair man.” I looked at him, startled. “I said fair,” he repeated. “Not likable.” I kept quiet. His father wasn’t the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves. He wasn’t a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper."

"Slavery was a long slow process of dulling. (p183)"

"He didn’t look all right to me. “Has anyone gone for the doctor?” “Marse Tom don’t hardly get Doc West for ague. He says all the doc knows is bleeding and blistering and purging and puking and making folks sicker than they was to start.”"

"Some of his neighbors found out what I was doing and offered him fatherly advice. It was dangerous to educate slaves, they warned. Education made blacks dissatisfied with slavery. It spoiled them for field work. The Methodist minister said it made them disobedient, made them want more than the Lord intended them to have."

""There're are worse things than being dead." (p253)"

"I got up to leave. There was nothing more to be said. He had asked for what he knew I could not give, and I had refused."

"Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave."

"She was too alert, too alive not to have the kind of mind that probed and reached and got her into trouble now and then."

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

"He was surprised when I ignored him. He is wealthy and arrogant and used to being listened to even when what he says is nonsense—as it often is."

"“What were they saying?” Daly asked. “They disapprove of your profession,” Doro told him. “Heathen savages,” Daly muttered. “They’re like animals. They’re all cannibals.” “These aren’t,” Doro said, “though some of the their neighbors are.” “All of them,” Daly insisted. “Just give them the chance.” Doro smiled. “Well, no doubt the missionaries will reach them eventually and teach them to practice only symbolic cannibalism.” Daly jumped. He considered himself a pious man in spite of his work. “You shouldn’t say such things,” he whispered. “Not even you are beyond the reach of God.” “Spare me your mythology,” Doro said, “and your righteous indignation.” Daly had been Doro’s man too long to be pampered in such matters. “At least we cannibals are honest about what we do,” Doro continued. “We don’t pretend as your slavers do to be acting for the benefit of our victims’ souls. We don’t tell ourselves we’ve caught them to teach them civilized religion.”"

"Short-lived people, people who could die, did not know what enemies loneliness and boredom could be."

"“What will they do when they have only the herbs” he asked her. “Live or die as best they can,” she said. “Everything truly alive dies sooner or later.”"

"“You’re bright,” Lupe said to her softly. “Very bright, but stubborn. You think you can choose your realities. You can’t.”"

"“It was an old passion,” he said. “I haven’t touched a violin for months. I didn’t know what that would be like.” “What is it like?” she asked. He began to walk so that she almost missed his answer. “An amputation,” he whispered."

"They had clearly feared turn-of-the-century irrationality—religious overzealousness on one side, destructive hedonism on the other, with both heated by ideological intolerance and corporate greed."

"So he had locked her in the closet. Some of his people, ignorant and fearful, could not quite believe her illness was not contagious. Badger locked her away from them for her own safety. She had seen for herself how eager they were to get her out of their sight."

"“Yes,” he said, “intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. But your denial doesn’t matter. A cancer growing in someone’s body will go on growing in spite of denial. And a complex combination of genes that work together to make you intelligent as well as hierarchical will still handicap you whether you acknowledge it or not.”"

"Lilith might be strong enough now to handle troublemakers herself, but she did not want to do that unless she had to. It would not help the people become a community, and if they could not unite, nothing else they did would matter."

"“I don’t understand why the sight of you should scare me so,” Joseph said. He did not sound frightened. “You don’t look that threatening. Just...very different.” “Different is threatening to most species,” Nikanj answered. “Different is dangerous. It might kill you. That was true to your animal ancestors and your nearest animal relatives. And it’s true for you.”"

"She found more gratification in teaching one willing student than a dozen resentful ones."

"“Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.” And she had put her hand on his hair. “When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.”"

"“I didn’t want to scare you. We don’t want to scare anyone.” “No? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to scare people. Sometimes fear is all that will keep them from doing stupid things.”"

"If you don’t care about my people, why should I care about yours?"

"He thought about that for a moment, wondered what he should say. The truth or nothing. The truth."

"“Yori, 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.”"

"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 everybody had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant."

"Life was treasure. The only treasure."

"Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up."

"Tomas stopped and looked at the three Oankali. “Do you believe in spirits?” “We believe in life,” Ahajas said. “Life after death?” Ahajas smoothed her tentacles briefly in agreement. “When I’m dead,” she said, “I will nourish other life.” “But I mean—” “If I died on a lifeless world, a world that could sustain some form of life if it were tenacious enough, organelles within each cell of my body would survive and evolve. In perhaps a thousand million years, that world would be as full of life as this one.” “...it would?” “Yes. Our ancestors have seeded a great many barren worlds that way. Nothing is more tenacious than the life we are made of. A world of life from apparent death, from dissolution. That’s what we believe in.” “Nothing more?” Ahajas became smooth enough with amusement to reflect firelight. “No, Lelka. Nothing more.”"

"Humans were genetically inclined to be intolerant of difference. They could overcome the inclination, but it was a reality of the Human conflict that they often did not."

"All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change."

"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 superperson. 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."

"People here in the neighborhood are saying she had no business going to Mars, anyway. All that money wasted on another crazy space trip when so many people here on earth can’t afford water, food, or shelter"

"Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn’t vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach."

"Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying."

"A victim of God may, Through learning adaption, Become a partner of God, A victim of God may, Through forethought and planning, Become a shaper of God. Or a victim of God may, Through shortsightedness and fear, Remain God’s victim, God’s plaything, God’s prey."

"Sometimes I write to keep from going crazy. There’s a world of things I don’t feel free to talk to anyone about."

"People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back’"

"I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic."

"It’s better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them."

"A tree Cannot grow In its parents’ shadows."

"There is a vast and terrible sibling rivalry going within the human family as we satisfy our desires for territory, dominance, and exclusivity. How strange: In our ongoing eagerness to create aliens, we express our need for them, and we express our deep fear of being alone in a universe that cares no more for us than it does for stones or suns or any other fragments of itself. And yet we are unable to get along with those aliens who are closest to us, those aliens who are of course ourselves. All the more need then to create more cooperative aliens, supernatural beings or intelligences from the stars. Sometimes we just need someone to talk to, someone we can trust to listen and care, someone who knows us as we really are and as we rarely get to know one another, someone whose whole agenda is us. Like children, we do still need great and powerful parent figures and we need invisible friends. What is adult behavior after all but modified, disguised, excused childhood behavior? The more educated, the more sophisticated, the more thoughtful we are, the more able we are to conceal the child within us. No matter. The child persists and it's lonely."