Octavia E. Butler Quotes
Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt - that is, they shared - all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another.
Quotes to Explore
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If I were to listen to people all the time when they say, 'Hey, this is a really high challenge, this is a high climb, the bar is pretty steep,' then I wouldn't have gone to the academy. I wouldn't have become an aircraft carrier pilot. I wouldn't have become a Navy SEAL for sure. And I probably wouldn't have applied to Harvard.
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When you challenge other people's ideas of who or how you should be, they may try to diminish and disgrace you. It can happen in small ways in hidden places, or in big ways on a world stage. You can spend a lifetime resenting the tests, angry about the slights and the injustices. Or, you can rise above it.
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Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
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A guy running, you know, fifteen, twenty stallions that are two years of age, never been touched by a human before, and you've got to start castrating them, that's pretty intimidating.
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The economic dynamic in Zimbabwe is perversely robust: while ordinary people suffer, black-market dealers and people with foreign bank accounts prosper, making them powerful stakeholders in the perpetuation of devastating economic policies.
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It's definitely weird, because pretty much everybody owns the Tony Hawk videogame. Just going over to people's houses and watching play me as I walk in – that's actually happened a few times and that's so weird. It's like, 'Dude, you're playing me right now.' It was too weird.
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Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think.
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Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed.
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When I was a kid - 10, 11, 12, 13 - the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody.
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Nobody should be too boastful or too proud about their security because there are people who have a major interest in cracking the security of networks, the security of companies.
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Make the people sovereign and the poor will use the machinery of government to dispossess the rich.
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I don't take it very seriously. You shouldn't let your success get to your head or failure get to your heart. This is most commonly said. But people don't really practise it. I don't see myself as a celebrity; it has not sunk in. I just see myself as someone doing a nine-to-six job like a techie.
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A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
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An important notion in Indian political thought that is of great value to Hungary is the idea of peaceful development.
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I liked 'Star Wars,' but I wasn't an uberfan like many people are.
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Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the greatest actors of our age; he's like Olivier. He's one of those people who can take you into a place where no one else can take you.
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I don't know, Y'know, I always wanted to be one of those cheerleader girls and I never was that, and I was never sort of cute and perky, and I always thought it was fun to be cute and perky, and those, I don't know what those girls are doing now.
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I like real people - salt-of-the-earth men.
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Frankly, people buying a home to let should not be squeezing out families who can't afford a home to buy.
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Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody nose.
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There are certain images that always haunt me.
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The technologists claim that if everything works [in a nuclear fission reactor] according to their blueprints, fission energy will be a safe and very attractive solution to the energy needs of the world. ... The real issue is whether their blueprints will work in the real world and not only in a "technological paradise."... Opponents of fission energy point out a number of differences between the real world and the "technological paradise." ... No acts of God can be permitted.
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Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt - that is, they shared - all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another.
