Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [468]

I can’t get rid of it. I’ve tried to change it or dump it, but I can’t. I cannot. It feels like the truest thing I’ve ever written. It’s as mysterious and as obvious as any other explanation of God or the universe that I’ve ever read, except that to me the others feel inadequate, at best. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 468

Note

The short clipped sentences and the emphatic restatement (“I can’t. I cannot.”) mime a person wrestling with a text she did not choose. “As mysterious and as obvious” welds the two adjectives usually opposed in descriptions of revelation, and the flat afterthought “at best” quietly dismisses every other cosmology in the library.