Lilith's Brood Quotes

“You are horror and beauty in rare combination.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Intelligence is relatively new to life on Earth, but your hierarchical tendencies are ancient.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.” And she had put her hand on his hair. “When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.” Akin”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“I wouldn’t want to give up being what I am,” I said. “I … I want to be ooloi. I really want it. And I wish I didn’t. How can I want to cause the family so much trouble?” “You want to be what you are. That’s healthy and right for you. What we do about it is our decision, our responsibility. Not yours.” I”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“how could they let insane people gain control of devices that could do so much harm? If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn’t give him power.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. And once we did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though we had stolen thoughts from their minds.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“The war was an insanity he had never understood, and no one in Phoenix had been able to explain it to him. At least, no one had been able to give him a reason why people who had excellent reasons to suppose they would destroy themselves if they did a certain thing chose to do that thing anyway. He thought he understood anger, hatred, humiliation, even the desire to kill a man. He had felt all those things. But to kill everyone … almost to kill the Earth … There were times when he wondered if somehow the Oankali had not caused the war for their own purposes. How could sane people like the ones he had left behind in Phoenix do such a thing—or, how could they let insane people gain control of devices that could do so much harm? If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn’t give him power.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Sometimes they need to prove to themselves that they still own themselves, that they can still care for themselves, that they still have things—customs—that are their own.”
“Sounds like an expression of the Human conflict,” Aaor said.
“It is,” I agreed. “They’re proving their independence at a time when they’re no longer independent...”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“The Human Contradiction again. The Contradiction, it was more often called among Oankali. Intelligence and hierarchical behavior. It was fascinating, seductive, and lethal. It had brought Humans to their final war.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.” And she had put her hand on his hair. “When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“We’re an adaptable species,” she said, refusing to be stopped, “but it’s wrong to inflict suffering just because your victim can endure it.” “Learn”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Sometimes you have to remember a feeling you haven’t had for a long time and bring it back so you can transmit it to someone else or use a feeling you have about one thing to help someone understand something else.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Now there was nothing to do but wait. Wait and know that when Humans disagreed, they sometimes fought, and when they fought, all too often they killed one another.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Fear was easier to deal with than this … this cold rejection—this revulsion. “Why do you hate me?” I whispered. “You would have died without an ooloi to save your life. Why do you hate me for saving your life?” João’s face underwent several changes. Surprise, regret, shame, anger, renewed hatred and revulsion. “I did not ask you to save me.” “Why do you hate me?” “I know what you do—your kind. You take men as though they were women!” “No! We—” “Yes! Your kind and your Human whores are the cause of all our trouble! You treat all mankind as your woman!” “Is that how I’ve treated you?” He became sullen. “I don’t know what you’ve done.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“JOÃO CHOSE AAOR. HE accepted help from it and talked to it and caressed its small breasts once he realized that neither it nor anyone else minded this. The breasts did not represent true mammary glands. Aaor would probably lose them when it metamorphosed. Most constructs did, even when they became female. But João liked them. Aaor simply enjoyed the contact.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Yes,” he said, “intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. But your denial doesn’t matter. A cancer growing in someone’s body will go on growing in spite of denial. And a complex combination of genes that work together to make you intelligent as well as hierarchical will still handicap you whether you acknowledge it or not.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“Akin rested his chin on Iriarte’s shoulder and savored the strange pale scents—all pale now.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“This would be so goddamn much easier if I weren’t human,” she said. “Think about it. If I weren’t human, why the hell would I care whether you got raped?”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“I heard disbelief and questioning, threats and cursing, honor and disgust.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“The ooloi have seen to it that you’ll have a chance to live on your Earth—not just to die on it.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood: The Complete Xenogenesis Trilogy

“All people who know what it is to end should be allowed to continue if they can continue.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“There are easier ways to say these things,” it admitted. “But some things shouldn’t be said easily.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“She could not make herself ask whether he would be conscious and aware during these experiments. She hoped he would be.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“It’s a good thing your people don’t eat meat. If you did, the way you talk about us, our flavors and your hunger and your need to taste us, I think you would eat us instead of fiddling with our genes.” And after a moment of silence, “That might even be better. It would be something we could understand and fight against.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood

“JDAHYA WOULD NOT LEAVE her. As much as she had hated her solitary confinement, she longed to be rid of him. He fell silent for a while and she wondered whether he might be sleeping—to the degree that he did sleep. She lay down herself, wondering whether she could relax enough to sleep with him there. It would be like going to sleep knowing there was a rattlesnake in the room, knowing she could wake up and find it in her bed.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood