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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Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?
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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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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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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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Life was treasure. The only treasure.
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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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How completely, how thoroughly he has stolen my child. I have never even tried to forgive him.
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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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Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce.
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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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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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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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If there's any single talent a writer needs, it's persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell.
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I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking.
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Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you're afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It's about not being able to stop at all.
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Beware:IgnoranceProtects itselfIgnorancePromotes suspicion.SuspicionEngenders fear.Fear quails,Irrational and blind,Or fear looms,Defiant and closed.Blind, closed,Suspicious, afraid,IgnoranceProtects itself,And protected,Ignorance grows.
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Science fiction is not formulaic.
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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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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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To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior. Earthseed: The Books of the Living