Octavia E. Butler Quotes
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The differences you perceive between Humans-between groups of Humans-are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments
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The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.
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I'm very happy alone.
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To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior. Earthseed: The Books of the Living
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I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.
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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.
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'Yori, Human purpose isn’t what you say it is or what I say it is. It’s what your biology says it is-what your genes say it is.'
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She glanced at him. 'What gods do you respect?''None.''And why not?''I help myself,' he said.
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Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.
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Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is.
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You are horror and beauty in rare combination.
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Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it.
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He thought about that for a moment, wondered what he should say. The truth or nothing. The truth.
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Are you Earthseed? Do you believe? Belief will not save you. Only actions guided and shaped by belief and knowledge will save you. BeliefInitiates and guides action - or it does nothing.
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Life was treasure. The only treasure.
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Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce.
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As a black and as a woman, I didn't think that I would really want to live in any of the eras before this, because I would inevitably be worse off. I would have spent more time struggling just to prove I was human than doing my work.
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She was too alert, too alive not to have the kind of mind that probed and reached and got her into trouble now and then.
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Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.
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People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.
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All religions are ultimately cargo cults.Adherents perform required rituals, followspecific rules, and expect to be supernaturallygifted with desired rewards-long life,honor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth,victory over opponents, immortality afterdeath, any desired rewards.
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I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking.
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Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. And once you did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though you had stolen thoughts from their minds.
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'I’ll tell you,' she said softly. 'But you won’t like it.'He looked away from her. 'I asked for the truth. Whether I like it or not, I have to know.'