Octavia Butler

Octavia E. Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction writer, one of the very few African-American women in the field.

Sourced

• 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 lied to.

  To be led by a tyrant

  is to sell yourself

  and those you love

  into slavery.

  • Parable of the Talents p.183 (Nebula Award for best novel in 2000). From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING: ELEVEN (the religion started by the novel's protagonist Lauren Olamina).

• Beware:

  All too often,

  We say

  What we hear others say.

  We think

  What we are told that we think.

  We see

  What we are permitted to see.

  Worse!

  We see what we are told that we see.

  Repetition and pride are the keys to this.

  To hear and to see

  Even an obvious lie

  Again

  And again and again

  May be to say it,

  Almost by reflex

  Then to defend it

  Because we have said it

  And at last to embrace it

  Because we've defended it.

  • Parable of the Talents p.307 (Nebula Award for best novel in 2000). From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING: EIGHTEEN (the religion started by the novel's protagonist Lauren Olamina).

Unsourced

• "It’s when people begin using their religion as just a way of getting power over other people that scares me. I’m afraid that’s what’s going on in a lot of cases right now. When people deliberately tell lies, Creationism for instance, and pretend, “Oh, it’s not really religion”. I mean they know they’re lying, and yet they’re the religious people. There’s something wrong there."
• "Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it"
• "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."
• "I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing."

External links

• Science Fiction Writer Octavia Butler on Race, Global Warming and Religion: an interview with Octavia Butler at democracynow.org
• Octavia E. Butler Quotes