Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [664]

“Yeah. Your age up to maybe twenty. There’s a few old ones, twenty-five, even thirty. I hear most of them don’t live that long though.” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 664

Note

A throwaway demographic fact that reads as worldbuilding-by-understatement: the Paints are defined by an actuarial curve rather than a description. The flat, matter-of-fact delivery (‘I hear most of them don’t live that long though’) makes the death rate mundane, which is the chapter’s mode throughout.