Wild Seed (Patternmaster, #1)

by Octavia E. Butler

Now my people are those who give me their loyalty.”

He shook his head. “I came to see what you were.” She frowned, suddenly cautious. “I am myself. You see me.” “As you see me. Do you imagine you see everything?”

…In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune.

“Well, no doubt the missionaries will reach them eventually and teach them to practice only symbolic cannibalism.”

Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing.

Short-lived people, people who could die, did not know what enemies loneliness and boredom could be.

Power came the way a child came—with agony.

A woman should have something of her own.”

Living has become too precious a habit.”

“It is easier to doom a child to this than to stay and watch it happen, isn’t it?” she said.

Doro looked at people, healthy or ill, and wondered what kind of young they could produce. Anyanwu looked at the sick—especially those with problems she had not seen before—and wondered whether she could defeat their disease.

I’m nothing to die for, Sun Woman, even if your dying could save me.”

Who was more suited to causing illness than one born to cure it?

Habits were difficult to break. The habit of living, the habit of fear … even the habit of love.

Again, she shrugged. “People grow old. They die.” “All of them,” he agreed. “All but you and I.” “You die constantly,” she said. He got up and went to sit beside her on the sofa. Somehow, she kept still, subdued her impulse to get up, move away from him. “I have never died,” he said. She stared past him at one of the candlesticks on the mantel. “Yes,” she said. “I should have said you kill constantly.”

“White women must be protected,” Doro said, “whether they want to be or not.” “As property is protected.” Anyanwu shook her head. “Preserved for the use of owners alone.

She was not Doro, breeding people as though they were cattle, though perhaps her gathering of all these special ones, these slightly strange ones would accomplish the same purpose as his breeding. She was herself, gathering family.

“Everything truly alive dies sooner or later.”