Octavia E. Butler Quotes
Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.
Quotes to Explore
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It would be wrong to assume that one must stay with a research programme until it has exhausted all its heuristic power, that one must not introduce a rival programme before everybody agrees that the point of degeneration has probably been reached.
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Even when something sad or tragic happens, I find a way to look at it in a positive light. People who don't have a sense of humor must be so sad all the time.
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As far as people whose style interests me, I'd say Grace Kelly, Gwen, Spice Girls, Victoria Beckham, and that nanny called Fran.
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The sort of man you will make of yourself, how you will be regarded by the world, whether people will admire and respect or despise you, whether you win the approval or the condemnation of your Maker - all this is in your own hands.
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I love everybody. One of the great things about me is that I have a very positive attitude.
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I tend to be the type who is overly polite and sort of ingratiating to other people.
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I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.
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To people of my generation, the picture show was really another dimension - sensual, whimsical. No uniforms or collective rites, but a place where little boys like me could laugh and feel free.
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I'd always wanted to be an action heroine. That's a chick dream, getting to wear a leather bodysuit and be blonde and kick ass. But, what really attracted me to 'Dredd' was the script. It was fantastic! It was about people and characters, and not just about explosions and fighting.
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I don't just want to be a cute girl in a comedy or the actress who just does the same thing over and over again. I want to play roles that are distinct. I want to have a more varied career like actresses Viola Davis or Angela Bassett - those are the people that I grew up watching and admiring.
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What if you could radically alter the way stories get told? What if the way people wanted to consume content actually changed what you could make?
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You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.
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One of the main ways that leadership stays in power is by, in various ways, convincing people that they should just let those who are in government govern: 'Trust us. Trust me. Just let us take care of things. Stay out of it.' Your opinions don't really matter. You are isolated. You are insignificant.
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If you write any kind of fiction about America, you immediately have to start doing some research about guns, so in some ways, 'Gun Machine' is just the culmination of 20 years of reading about guns.
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The proverbial philosophy of a people helps us to understand more about them than any other kind of literature.
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Always go into meetings or negotiations with a positive attitude. Tell yourself you're going to make this the best deal for all parties.
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All of us have a bit of a sociopath inside of us, and it's wrong to think that somebody is just clearly sociopathic, because they're not. It's interesting to explore the shadings and nuances within a person. Those feelings exist within more human beings than people may want to acknowledge.
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It is inexcusable that the richest country in the world does not take care of all of its people. We don't consider ourselves idealistic; we're thoughtfully trying to make a beautiful health care model.
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When you're in a start-up, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. Each is 10 percent of the company. So why wouldn't you take as much time as necessary to find all the A players? If three were not so great, why would you want a company where 30 percent of your people are not so great? A small company depends on great people much more than a big company does.
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One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most.
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You choose to be happy, and in life we have as many good days as bad days. I try to find and record those songs that pull you through the bad days, and keep you believing that the good days are just around the corner.
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I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.
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Mine was an apparent forward movement whereas Burley's was a continuous serpentine movement.
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Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.
