J RRO > J's Quotes

“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren't any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“It’s better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them. It’s harder to scare them a second time, harder to teach them, harder to win back their trust. Best to begin by teaching.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“We’ll have to be very careful how we allow our needs to shape us.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“PRODIGY IS, AT ITS essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“These things frighten people. It’s best not to talk about them.” “But, Dad, that’s like … like ignoring a fire in the living room because we’re all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“I’m still learning how dogged people can be in denial, even when their freedom or their lives are at stake.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“It scares me how many things I've got to learn. How will I learn them?”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Is any of this real? Dangerous question. Sometimes I don’t know the answer. I doubt myself. I doubt what I think I know. I try to forget about it. After all, if it’s real, why doesn’t anyone else know about it. Every one knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism’s insistence that nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes (“To everything there is a season”), change is part of life, of existence, of the common wisdom. But I don’t believe we’re dealing with all that that means. We haven’t even begun to deal with it.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“A victim of God may, Through learning adaption, Become a partner of God, A victim of God may, Through forethought and planning, Become a shaper of God. Or a victim of God may, Through shortsightedness and fear, Remain God’s victim, God’s plaything, God’s prey.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“AT LEAST THREE YEARS ago, my fathers God stopped being my God. His church stopped being my church. And yet, today, because I’m a coward, I let myself be initiated into that church. I let my father baptize me in all three names of that God who isn’t mine any more. My God has another name.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Praying makes people feel better even when there’s no action they can take,” he said. “I used to think that was all God was good for—to help people like my mother stand what they had to stand.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Life alone is enough. I find it … more exciting and encouraging than I can explain, more important than I can explain. There is life out there. There are living worlds just a few light years away, and the United States is busy drawing back from even our nearby dead worlds, the moon and Mars. I understand why they are, but I wish they weren’t.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven’t been wiped out by a plague so they’re still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have changed a lot, and they’ll change more. Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“but it took a plague to make some of the people realize that things could change.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Sometimes people say I look grim or angry. Better to have them think that than know the truth. Better to have them think anything than know just how easy it is to hurt me.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Sometimes writing about a thing makes it easier to stand.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“God is Change, and in the end, God prevails. But there’s hope in understanding the nature of God—not punishing or jealous, but infinitely malleable. There’s comfort in realizing that everyone and everything yields to God. There’s power in knowing that God can be focused, diverted, shaped by anyone at all. But there’s no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you. You know that.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“All successful life is Adaptable, Opportunistic, Tenacious, Interconnected, and Fecund. Understand this. Use it. Shape God.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“I wonder what a badge is, other than a license to steal.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“I want you to be serious. I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Earthseed deals with ongoing reality, not with supernatural authority figures. Worship is no good without action. With action, it’s only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, eases your mind.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“We are a harvest of survivors.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of super-person. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of.
Some say God is a spirit, a force, an ultimate reality. Ask seven people what all of that means and you’ll get seven different answers. So what is God? Just another name for whatever makes you feel special and protected?”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower / Parable of the Talents / Kindred

“Every one knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism’s insistence that nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes (“To everything there is a season”), change is part of life, of existence, of the common wisdom.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower