Octavia E. Butler Quotes
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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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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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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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'It was an old passion,' he said. 'I haven’t touched a violin for months. I didn’t know what that would be like.''What is it like?' she asked.He began to walk so that she almost missed his answer. 'An amputation,' he whispered.
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When I meet a woman who attracts me, I prefer women,' she said. 'And when I meet a man who attracts me, I prefer men.' 'You mean you haven't made up your mind yet.' 'I mean exactly what I said. I told you you wouldn't like it. Most people who ask want me definitely on one side or the other.
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When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.
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...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.
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I don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do.
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Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.
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Life is getting better, but that won’t stop a war if politicians and business people decide it’s to their advantage to have one.
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You are horror and beauty in rare combination.
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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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'Yes,' he said, 'intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. But your denial doesn’t matter. A cancer growing in someone’s body will go on growing in spite of denial. And a complex combination of genes that work together to make you intelligent as well as hierarchical will still handicap you whether you acknowledge it or not.'
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Some of his neighbors found out what I was doing and offered him fatherly advice. It was dangerous to educate slaves, they warned. Education made blacks dissatisfied with slavery. It spoiled them for field work. The Methodist minister said it made them disobedient, made them want more than the Lord intended them to have.
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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.'
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Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.
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We were snatched away and given alone into the hands of people who believed that it was their duty to break us and remake us in the Christian American image. And, of course, breaking people is much easier than putting them together again.So much agony caused, so much evil done in God’s name.
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The Destiny of EarthseedIs to take root among the stars.
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The essentials are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.
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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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Most of us don't have to worry about being shot of we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility.
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Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.
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Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.
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In countries where there are no racial differences or no religious differences, people find other reasons to set aside one certain group of people and generally spit in their direction.