Octavia E. Butler Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.