339 Quotes by Octavia E. Butler

Grief hit like that. Something would remind us of the past, of home, of a person, and then we would remember that it was all gone. The person was dead or probably dead. Everything we’d known and treasured was gone.

But tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. I thought of Alice, and then of Rufus, and I realized that Rufus had done exactly what I had said he would do: Gotten possession of the woman without having to bother with her husband. Now, somehow, Alice would have to accept not only the loss of her husband, but her own enslavement. Rufus had caused her trouble, and now he had been rewarded for it. It made no sense. No matter how kindly he treated her now that he had destroyed her, it made no sense. I.

You controlled both animals and people by controlling their reproduction – controlling it absolutely.

Daddy’s the only man I know,” he said softly, “who cares as much about giving his word to a black as to a white.

He led the way past the main house away from the slave cabins and other buildings, away from the small slave children who chased each other and shouted and didn’t understand yet that they were slaves.

It was literally the best food she had tasted in two hundred and fifty years.

She went to him. She adjusted, became a quieter more subdued person. She didn’t kill, but she seemed to die a little.

But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I’d kill myself.

I wonder what a badge is, other than a license to steal.