Vox Populi
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Octavia E. Butler: Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear
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In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
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First, forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.
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People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn’t bother me. It’s other people doing the calling that bothers me.
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All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth Is Change.
God is Change.
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You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
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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.
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All struggles are essentially power struggles, and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.
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Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of “wrong” ideas.
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Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.
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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.
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Kindness eases change
Love quiets fear
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Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom.
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I have a huge and savage conscience that won’t let me get away with things.
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I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.
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These quotations, selected and arranged by Michael Simms, are drawn from Octavia E. Butler’s books The Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, Patternmaster and Kindred, .
Octavia Estelle Butler (1947 – 2006) was an American science fiction writer who won Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Born in Pasadena, California, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. She was extremely shy as a child, but Butler found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. Butler attended community college during the Black Power movement in the 1960s. While participating in a local writer’s workshop, she was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop which focused on science fiction. She sold her first stories soon after, and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author to be able to write full-time. Butler’s books and short stories drew the favorable attention of critics and the public, and awards soon followed.
Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. At the time of her death, interest in her books was beginning to rise, and in recent years, sales of her books have increased enormously as the issues she addressed in her Afro-Futuristic, feminist novels and short fiction have become more relevant. Her work is now taught in over 200 colleges and universities nationwide. The #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel adaptation of her book KINDRED, created by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, received the Eisner Award for best adaptation.
Currently, Butler’s novel DAWN is being developed for television by Ava DuVernay (“Selma”; “A Wrinkle In Time”). An opera by Toshi Reagon based on Butler’s novel PARABLE OF THE SOWER was part of The Public Theatre “Under the Radar” festival and toured worldwide in 2018. Amazon Studios and JuVee Productions (Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s production company) are developing a drama series from Butler’s PATTERNIST series, beginning with WILD SEED, and the series is being co-written by Nnedi Okorafor and Wanuri Kahiu, who will also direct. Butler’s papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
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“Kindness eases change
Love quiets fear”
Amen!
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Amen!
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Thank you for these worthy instructions from Octavia who clearly wrote them from experience.
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Thank you, Luray!
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Reading this post has been the high point of my day.
Thank you, Michael.
Adrian
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At one point Octavia Butler was in the same high school as I was ( Muir in Pasadena) and one year behind me. How I wish I had known her then! I revisited her books just before our plague. Her writing belongs with the greatest science fiction and dystopian works of the last 200 years.
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I agree!
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It’s been a while since I last looked for sci-fi (apart from Ursula, of course). I kind of grew out of it? (Or so I thought.) I definitely have to read her. What a wonderful selection. I am watering at the mouth.
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Her fiction is speculative, sci-fi with a strong social justice message.
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My philosopher friend, Bill, who’s account somehow won’t allow him to comment here, joins me in loving the compilation. But it also inspires him to finish writing his novel. Persistence, Bill. You’ve got the talent.
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Thanks, Jim.
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“I have a huge and savage conscience…” sounds like something that Everyone could strive to uncover.
I’m starting again now.
Thanks for the reminder.
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Thanks, Owen.
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“First, forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”
Right on. In 43 years of “teaching” I prefer *coaching) *writing, I made this point as often as possible. My analogy was from sports. There were doubtless many young men who had the physical talents, say, of Michael Jordan; but he was the first to practice and last to leave. He persisted. And among the several distinguished former students I had, it was the ones for whom writin g had no sub stitute, so they kept at it and kept at it and kept at it.
OEB, RIP
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I couldn’t agree more. Inspiration comes when you’ve prepared yourself to receive it. Practice, practice, practice, then just wail.
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” (…) then just wail!
There’s nothing more to say after that…
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a lovely compendium of wisdom(s) from one of the wise women of our time, one who, like her brother in science fiction, Theodore Sturgeon, continued to “ask the next question”…)
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Thank you for assembling these quotes and offering them this morning!
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Thank you, Hayden, for reading and subscribing!
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Hi Hayden. My friend Tom Mallouk introduced me to your work, which is truly remarkable and compelling. Nice to cross paths here where Michael curates such stunning work daily. Be well!
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