Octavia E. Butler Quotes

The irony is that the more specific you are in the portrayal of character, the more like other people you are. In the same way, the more you think about how alone you are in this life, you realise how much a brother and sister everyone else is.

What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other.

As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that's what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else's shoes, and to take someone else's circumstances personally.

No one is ever really a stranger. We cling to the belief that we share nothing with certain people. It's rubbish. We have almost everything in common with everyone.

I feel like the one insight that's extremely comforting to me about the world is that we all share the same pool of emotion that we draw from.

We're all connected, related, part of one another's lives through the stories we tell ourselves and each other. For good and for bad.

I think we all suffer the same pain, all feel the same happiness, and we all have the same emotions within us.

I discover in my experiential space evidence for the wrongness of solipsism, and this evidence is called beauty.

Whatever the reason is, I am happiest when connecting with the human experience. It lets me know that I'm not alone in this world.

The last page of [Lincoln in the Bardo] - without giving too much away - involves somebody entering somebody else. Not in a sexual way. But it says one of the simplest things you could ever say, which is that we must try and be inside each other. We must have some kind of feeling for each other and enter into each other's experience.

The best moments any of us have as human beings are those moments when for a little while it is possible to escape the squirrel-cage of being me into the landscape of being us.

What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.

It's strange how we always want other people to feel what we feel. It must be a basic human drive. Misery loves company, right? Or when you see a movie that you love, don't you want to drag all your friends to see it as well? Because it's only good the second time if it's the first time for somebody else—as if their experience somehow resonates inside of you.

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

‎When you meet anyone, treat the event as a holy encounter. It's through others that we either find or love our self. For you see, nothing is accomplished without others. When you eliminate the concept of separation from your thoughts and your behavior, you begin to feel your connection to everything and everyone.

I have never met a person in whom I did not see myself reflected.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

I just think that the only way we come to ourselves is through each other.

There are those moments when you shake someone's hand, have a conversation with someone, and suddenly your all bound together because you share your humanity in one simple moment.

I think, really, that the only way a person can open their heart to someone who is so much another is really by knowing them... whether that's in a classroom, or a soccer team, or a food pantry, or any of those things. I mean, we're kind of more alike than we are different.

It's difficult to have any animosity towards someone if you recognize that on so many levels they're exactly the same as you.

I chose to present myself as one who comes from among the people, and I can be touched by their pain because I have my own.

Our community of contagion really is a world community.

My varied listening palette is all-inclusive of all walks of life. No one individual is exempt from the human experience, so it is that intangible that is a universal truth. In that regard, I've had success in encapsulating something cosmic.

I've learnt that the world over, everyone's essentially the same. We are all trying to have a nice time and get along with things.