Octavia E. Butler Quotes
My race and sex had a great deal more to do with what people believed I could do than with what I actually could do.
Quotes to Explore
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I've never been one to run from a challenge.
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My father insisted that I and my sisters not be indoctrinated into any religion at any age.
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We should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence, but imagining the sound.
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'Cold Case Files' and similar shows do bang up business, which points to a certain thirst for details in the viewership, but it seems like all the news chat shows continue to force the myth that Americans can't stand detail and have no interest in an idea that can't fit on a bumper sticker.
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When it looks like I may live longer than five minutes I'll drop cigarettes like a hot potato.
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Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
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We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.
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I'm not trying to prove anything for the right or the left. Which gives me freedom to make jokes about either side, too.
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I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.
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I'm interested in playing, not working.
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I did not have a van, or wear Birkenstocks and tie-dyes.
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A lot of actors know they want to be actors a little bit earlier on. I didn't even really start studying until I was about 22.
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If you grew up in my generation, you're going to be influenced by Run DMC, the Beastie Boys and also listen to Metallica - it wasn't segregated anymore.
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I think the audience keeps it fresh for me. You just never know – every audience has its own personality.
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Slow travel now rivals the fly-to-Barcelona-for-lunch culture. Advocates savour the journey, travelling by train or boat or bicycle, or even on foot, rather than crammed into an airplane. They take time to plug into the local culture instead of racing through a list of tourist traps.
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A filial son to his father can be a traitorous subject to his ruler.
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Broccoli gets such a bad rap. This is perplexing to those of us who love that green, treelike, stalky vegetable.
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I can see through almost any scam, especially one perpetrated by the federal government. I can see through it... they can't pull the wool over my eyes, it's absolutely freakin' impossible to pull the wool over my eyes about the government.
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Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you're handing out plagues of darkness, locusts, hail, boils, flies, lice, frogs, and cattle murrain, and turning the Nile to blood and smiting the firstborn, give me a pass. And tell me when it's over.
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Brexit has really broken a taboo. The Brits have shown us that you can leave the European Union, and you can come out better.
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As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
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My race and sex had a great deal more to do with what people believed I could do than with what I actually could do.
