Octavia E. Butler Quotes
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I had novels to write, so I wrote them.
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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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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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Life was treasure. The only treasure.
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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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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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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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Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor.
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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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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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Science fiction is not formulaic.
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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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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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Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce.
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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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Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it.
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'Your God doesn’t care about you at all,' Travis said.'All the more reason to care about myself and others.'
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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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I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking.
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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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We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.
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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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'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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Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.