Kindred Quotes

“Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of "wrong" ideas.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“That educated didn’t mean smart. He had a point. 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.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Sometimes I wrote things because I couldn't say them, couldn't sort out my feelings about them, couldn't keep them bottled inside me.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else's trouble.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Like all good works of fiction, it lies like the truth.”
― Robert Crossley, Kindred

“...I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin's World War II books - a book of excerpts from the recollections of concentration camp survivors. Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation. As though the Germans had been trying to do in only a few years what the Americans had worked at for nearly two hundred.

... Like the Nazis, antebellum whites had known quite a bit about torture - quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“I closed my eyes and saw the children playing their game again. 'The ease seemed so frightening.' I said. 'Now I see why.'
'What?'
'The ease. Us, the children ... I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“I'd rather see the others."
"What others?"
"The ones who make it. The ones living in freedom now."
"If any do."
"They do."
"Some say they do. It's like dying, though, and going to heaven. Nobody ever comes back to tell you about it.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“in an interview Butler has stated that the meaning of the amputation is clear enough: “I couldn’t really let her come all the way back. I couldn’t let her return to what she was, I couldn’t let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn’t leave people quite whole.”1 Time”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“She means the devil with people who say you're anything but what you are.”
― Octavia Butler, Kindred

“That’s history. It happened whether it offends you or not. Quite a bit of it offends me, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Strangely, they seemed to like him, hold him in contempt, and fear him all at the same time. This confused me because I felt just about the same mixture of emotions for him myself. I had thought my feelings were complicated because he and I had such a strange relationship. But then, slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships. Only the overseer drew simple, unconflicting emotions of hatred and fear when he appeared briefly. But then, it was part of the overseer’s job to be hated and feared while the master kept his hands clean.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“She went to him. She adjusted, became a quieter more subdued person. She didn't kill, but she seemed to die a little.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“He wasn't a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“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.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Kevin, you don’t have to beat people to treat them brutally.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“She means it doesn't come off, Dana... The black. She means the devil with people who say you're anything but what you are.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“I lost an arm on my last trip home.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“There are so many interesting times we could have visited.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“even people who loved me could demand more of me than I could give—and expect their demands to be met simply because I owed them. I”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You need to look at some of the niggers they catch and bring back,” she said. “You need to see them—starving, ’bout naked, whipped, dragged, bit by dogs … You need to see them.” “I’d rather see the others.” “What others?” “The ones who make it. The ones living in freedom now.” “If any do.” “They do.” “Some say they do. It’s like dying, though, and going to heaven. Nobody ever comes back to tell you about it.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Time passed. Kevin and I became more a part of the household, familiar, accepted, accepting. That disturbed me too when I thought about it. How easily we seemed to acclimatize.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Someday Rufus would own the plantation. Someday, he would be the slaveholder, responsible in his own right for what happened to the people who lived in those half-hidden cabins. The boy was literally growing up as I watched—growing up because I watched and because I helped to keep him safe. I was the worst possible guardian for him—a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that considered women perennial children. I would have all I could do to look after myself. But I would help him as best I could. And I would try to keep friendship with him, maybe plant a few ideas in his mind that would help both me and the people who would be his slaves in the years to come.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“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.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“He moved uncomfortably. "Reading's too much trouble. Mr. Jennings said I was too stupid to learn anyway."
"Who's Mr. Jennings?"
"He's the schoolmaster."
"Is he?" I shook my head in disgust. "He shouldn't be. Listen, do you think you're stupid?"
"No." A small hesitant no. "But I read as good as Daddy does already. Why should I have to do more than that?"
"You don't have to. You can stay just the way you are. Of course, that would give Mr. Jennings the satisfaction of thinking he was right about you.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred