"They can create something beautiful, useful, even something worthless. But they create. They don't destroy."

Octavia Butler Literature See all quotes by Octavia Butler →

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More by Octavia Butler

“I’m literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.”

“Jarrett would be easier to take if he cared half as much about children’s bodies and minds as he pretends to care about their souls.”

““It’s a crucifix,” Wright told me when I showed it to him. “It must have been worn by one of the people who lived here. Or maybe the arsonist lost it.” He gave a humorless smile. “You never know who’s liable to turn out to be religious.”

“Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.”

“Who knows what we humans have that others might be willing to take in trade for a livable space on a world not our own.”

“I might not have believed this if a Human had said it. Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everybody had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant.”

Resonant Thoughts

"With so many people doing so much writing, great writing is hard to find ... If you succeed in attaining a position that allows you to do something great, if you do something that really is great, and…"

— Leslie Lamport

Mathematics1941

#friendship

"People who couldn’t imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn’t need to imagine, because they already were. Lowbeer had said it was always a mista…"

— William Gibson

Literature1948–2008

#mind

"We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty — or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one‑fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the page…"

— Abraham Lincoln

Politics1744–1786

#time

"Pakistan propaganda has sought to make the world believe that the happenings of 1947 in the Punjab were the result of what it calls ‘Some specific Plan’ on the part of Sikhs. -What this ‘Plan’ exactly…"

— Gurbachan Singh Talib

Literature1911–1986

#life