Octavia Butler Quotes

Quotes about:

• Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

  Octavia Butler

  Liars, Lying, Tyrants

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.226, Open Road Media

  138 Copy quote

• All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.

  Octavia Butler

  Change, God, Truth Is

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.7, Open Road Media

  77 Copy quote

• 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.

  Octavia Butler

  Inspiration, Writing, Persistence

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Bloodchild: And Other Stories”, p.128, Open Road Media

  73 Copy quote

• Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.

  Octavia Butler

  Thinking, Be Who You Are, Ought

  21 Copy quote

• We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.

  Octavia Butler

  Confidence, Climbing, Permit

  Octavia E. Butler (2011). “Bloodchild and Other Stories”, p.149, Seven Stories Press

  26 Copy quote

• Beware: Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.

  Octavia Butler

  Ignorance, Blind, Quails

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.244, Open Road Media

  77 Copy quote

• In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix First Must Burn.

  Octavia Butler

  Order, Phoenix, Ashes

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.309, Open Road Media

  57 Copy quote

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

  Attitude, Writing, People

  29 Copy quote

• Consider We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.

  Octavia Butler

  Purpose, Born

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.432, Open Road Media

  9 Copy quote

• All struggles are essentially power struggles. Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles,and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.

  Octavia Butler

  Struggle, Two, Design

  Octavia E. Butler (2017). “Earthseed: The Complete Series”, p.115, Open Road Media

  68 Copy quote

• 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 Butler

  Best Friend, Friendship, Letting Go

  79 Copy quote

• People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.

  Octavia Butler

  Freedom, Equality, Rights

  66 Copy quote

• Kindness eases change
  Love quiets fear

  Octavia Butler

  Kindness, Ease

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.55, Open Road Media

  29 Copy quote

• Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.

  Octavia Butler

  Fighting, People, Sometimes

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Sower”, p.69, Open Road Media

  41 Copy quote

• We need the stars... We need purpose! We need the image the Destiny to take root among the stars gives us of ourselves as a purposeful, growing species. We need to become the adult species that the Destiny can help us become! If we're to be anything other than smooth dinosaurs who evolve, specialize and die, we need the stars.... 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 Butler

  Stars, Fighting, Destiny

  40 Copy quote

• Ignorance
  Protects itself,
  And protected,
  Ignorance grows.

  Octavia Butler

  Ignorance, Quails, Protect

  Octavia E. Butler (1998). “Parable of the Talents: A Novel”, p.187, Seven Stories Press

  9 Copy quote

• People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.

  Octavia Butler

  Giving Up, Writing, Persistence

  Octavia E. Butler (2011). “Bloodchild and Other Stories”, p.148, Seven Stories Press

  35 Copy quote

• You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

  Octavia Butler

  Writing, Persistence, Thinking

  39 Copy quote

• The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place, One's own people, One's own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise- Into growth and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.

  Octavia Butler

  Children, Home, Should Have

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.130, Open Road Media

  34 Copy quote

• I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

  Octavia Butler

  Writing, Stories, Wanted

  48 Copy quote

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

  Octavia Butler

  Becoming, Sometimes, Slave

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Wild Seed”, p.14, Open Road Media

  3 Copy quote

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

  Octavia Butler

  Writing, Stories

  8 Copy quote

• Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.

  Octavia Butler

  Writing, Rejection, Painful

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Bloodchild: And Other Stories”, p.128, Open Road Media

  6 Copy quote

• Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.

  Octavia Butler

  Inspiration, Forget, Habit

  Octavia E. Butler (2011). “Bloodchild and Other Stories”, p.145, Seven Stories Press

  10 Copy quote

• There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.

  Octavia Butler

  World, Demand, Ends

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Sower”, p.154, Open Road Media

  26 Copy quote

Page 1 of 5

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin