Octavia E. Butler Quotes
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People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't.
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I don't know how much of a market there is for space opera. Just because it's in the movies doesn't mean magazines are buying it.
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To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
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Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
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I lost an arm on my last trip home.
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Science fiction is not formulaic.
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Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?
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I got up to leave. There was nothing more to be said. He had asked for what he knew I could not give, and I had refused.
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Religion is a dangerous prod, because it can always be misused and get out of hand, but it's useful for keeping people on the straight and narrow.
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I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision.
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I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.
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When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.
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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.
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Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor.
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Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world.
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A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time.
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I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?'
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The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing.
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The norm is white, apparently, in the view of people who see things in that way. For them, the only reason you would introduce a black character is to introduce this kind of abnormality. Usually, it's because you're telling a story about racism or at least about race.
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I had novels to write, so I wrote them.
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'He’s a fair man.'I looked at him, startled.'I said fair,' he repeated. 'Not likable.'I kept quiet. His father wasn’t the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves. He wasn’t a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.
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All strugglesAre essentiallyPower struggles.Who will rule,Who will lead,Who will define,refine,confine,design,Who will dominate.All strugglesAre essentiallyPower struggles, And mostare no more intellectualthan two ramsknocking their heads together.
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'I didn’t want to scare you. We don’t want to scare anyone.''No? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to scare people. Sometimes fear is all that will keep them from doing stupid things.'
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How completely, how thoroughly he has stolen my child. I have never even tried to forgive him.