“Intelligence is relatively new to life on Earth, but your hierarchical tendencies are ancient.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“how could they let insane people gain control of devices that could do so much harm? If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn’t give him power.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“Sometimes they need to prove to themselves that they still own themselves, that they can still care for themselves, that they still have things—customs—that are their own.”
“Sounds like an expression of the Human conflict,” Aaor said.
“It is,” I agreed. “They’re proving their independence at a time when they’re no longer independent...”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“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.” Akin”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“I wouldn’t want to give up being what I am,” I said. “I … I want to be ooloi. I really want it. And I wish I didn’t. How can I want to cause the family so much trouble?” “You want to be what you are. That’s healthy and right for you. What we do about it is our decision, our responsibility. Not yours.” I”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“This would be so goddamn much easier if I weren’t human,” she said. “Think about it. If I weren’t human, why the hell would I care whether you got raped?”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“We’re an adaptable species,” she said, refusing to be stopped, “but it’s wrong to inflict suffering just because your victim can endure it.” “Learn”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“Akin rested his chin on Iriarte’s shoulder and savored the strange pale scents—all pale now.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“She could not make herself ask whether he would be conscious and aware during these experiments. She hoped he would be.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“The war was an insanity he had never understood, and no one in Phoenix had been able to explain it to him. At least, no one had been able to give him a reason why people who had excellent reasons to suppose they would destroy themselves if they did a certain thing chose to do that thing anyway. He thought he understood anger, hatred, humiliation, even the desire to kill a man. He had felt all those things. But to kill everyone … almost to kill the Earth … There were times when he wondered if somehow the Oankali had not caused the war for their own purposes. How could sane people like the ones he had left behind in Phoenix do such a thing—or, how could they let insane people gain control of devices that could do so much harm? If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn’t give him power.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
Octavia E. Butler
Born place: in Pasadena, California, The United States
Born date June 22, 1947
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“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― quote from Alice in Wonderland
“Are you guys busy?" Juniper asked.
"Well," I said, "we're in the middle of this game against a bunch of monsters and we're trying not to die."
"We're not busy," Annabeth said.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Battle of the Labyrinth
“You must never feel badly about making mistakes ... as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.”
― Norton Juster, quote from The Phantom Tollbooth
“His muscles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so that each rib and every bone in his frame were outlined cleanly through the loose hide that was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was heartbreaking, only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the red sweater had proved that.”
― Jack London, quote from The Call of the Wild
“At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Madame Bovary
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