Imago Quotes

“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.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“I might not have believed this if a Human had said it. 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, Imago

“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.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“Lilith’s ability had run in her family, although neither she nor her ancestors had been able to control it. It had either lain dormant in them or come to life in insane, haphazard fashion and caused the growth of useless new tissue. New tissue gone obscenely wrong. Humans called this condition cancer. To them, it was a hated disease. To the Oankali, it was treasure. It was beauty beyond Human comprehension.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“Humans had evolved from hierarchical life, dominating, often killing other life. Oankali had evolved from acquisitive life, collecting and combining with other life. To kill was not simply wasteful to the Oankali. It was as unacceptable as slicing off their own healthy limbs.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“Give yourself time. You’re a new kind of being. There’s never been anyone like you before. But there’s no flaw in you. You just need time to find out more about yourself.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“The new was too often put at the service of the old. It will be again.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“Finally there was my ooloi parent, Nikanj. It would tell me to go to one of my same-sex parents—one of my fathers. What else could it say? I knew well enough that I was in metamorphosis, and that that was one of the few things ooloi parents could not help with. There were still some Humans who insisted on seeing the ooloi as some kind of male-female combination, but the ooloi were no such thing. They were themselves—a different sex altogether. So I went to Nikanj only hoping to enjoy its company for a while. Eventually it would notice what was happening to me and send me to my fathers. Until it did, I would rest near it. I was tired, sleepy. Metamorphosis was mostly sleep.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“What are guards but villagers doing a tiresome, temporary duty?”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“You’re really going to let me go?” “Tomorrow.” It was our twenty-fifth night together. He still pretended to ignore me during the day, but it had apparently become so much trouble for him to manufacture hatred against me at night. He accepted what I did for him and he did not insult me. He didn’t insult anyone.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“Something had gone seriously wrong with Aaor’s body, as Nikanj had said. It kept slipping away from me—simplifying its body. It had no control of itself, but like a rock rolling downhill, it had inertia. Its body “wanted” to be less and less complex. If it had stayed unattended in the water for much longer, it would have begun to break down completely—individual cells each with its own seed of life, its own Oankali organelle. These might live for a while as single-cell organisms or invade the bodies of larger creatures at once, but Aaor as an individual would be gone. In a way, then, Aaor’s body was trying to commit suicide. I had never heard of any carrier of the Oankali organism doing such a thing. We treasured life. In my worst moments before I found Jesusa and Tomás, such dissolution had not occurred to me. I didn’t doubt that it would have happened eventually—not as something desirable, but as something inescapable, inevitable. We called our need for contact with others and our need for mates hunger. The word had not been chosen frivolously. One who could hunger could starve.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“You’re healthy,” it said. “Your development is exactly right. I can’t find any flaw in you.” And”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“I constructed you to look very male—so male that the females would be attracted to you and help convince you that you were male.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“Ooan?” I said. I hadn’t called it that for years. My older siblings called our parents by their names, and I had begun early to imitate them. Now, though, I was afraid. I did not want “Nikanj.” I wanted “Ooan,” the parent I had most often gone to or been carried to for healing or teaching. “Ooan, can’t you change me back? I still look male.” “You know better,” it said aloud. “But …” “You were never male, no matter how you looked. You were eka. You know that.” I”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“I lost focus on everything else.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“I startled it. No, I shocked it profoundly—and it transmitted to me the full impact of that shock. Its multisensory illusions felt more real than things that actually happened, and this was worse than an illusion. This was a sudden, swift cycling of its own intense surprise and fear. From me to it to me. Closed loop. I”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“So what? You have to teach people how to touch you?” I”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“To them it’s like deliberately causing the conception of a child who is so defective that it must die in infancy. ”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“The word “ooloi” could not be translated directly into English because its meaning was as complex as Nikanj’s scent. “Treasured stranger.” “Bridge.” “Life trader.” “Weaver.” “Magnet.” Magnet, my birth mother says. People are drawn to ooloi and can’t escape. She couldn’t, certainly. But then, neither could Nikanj escape her or any of its mates. The Oankali said the chemical bonds of mating were as difficult to break as the habit of breathing. Scents”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago

“There were still some Humans who insisted on seeing the ooloi as some kind of male-female combination, but the ooloi were no such thing. They were themselves—a different sex altogether. So”
― Octavia E. Butler, Imago