I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing. Octavia Butler More Quotes by Octavia Butler More Quotes From Octavia Butler Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Octavia Butler intelligence civilization mean The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing. Octavia Butler writing character people Ignorance Octavia Butler quails protect ignorance Kindness eases change Octavia Butler ease kindness Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned. Octavia Butler intelligent forever thinking There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you. Octavia Butler demand ends world I'm a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocial -- a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles -- a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive. Octavia Butler oil-and-water ambition years When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing. Octavia Butler choke rage Life is getting better, but that won't stop a war if politicians and business people decide it's to their advantage to have one. Octavia Butler get-better war people Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live. Octavia Butler civilization people way Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Octavia Butler different giving needs Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage. Octavia Butler rejection painful writing I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you. Octavia Butler people needs thinking That which could hunger, could starve. Octavia Butler hunger No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities. Octavia Butler people past thinking The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. Octavia Butler destiny stars roots The big talent is persistence. Octavia Butler persistence talent bigs If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you. There is no escape. What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be if escape were possible Octavia Butler would-be air desire You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all... That was like ignoring cancer. Octavia Butler cancer pride animal The only lasting truth is change. God is change. Octavia Butler change-god truth-is lasting
