“He had guns,” Celia said. “Iosif didn’t like guns, but Stefan did.” It hadn’t helped him survive. - Octavia E. Butler

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 write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people.

I began writing the book with the thought that maybe what we needed was the biological conscience. It does seem to me that there are too many people in this world who would just as soon wipe out half their country if they could rule the other half.