Octavia E. Butler Quotes
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The major tragedies in life, there's just no compensation. But the minor ones you can always write about. It's my way of dealing, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than psychiatrists. The story, you see, will get you through.
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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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Most vampires I have discovered are men for some reason. I guess it's because of Dracula; people are kind of feeding off that.
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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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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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Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.
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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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Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.
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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 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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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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First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.
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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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...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.
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Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.
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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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Lilith might be strong enough now to handle troublemakers herself, but she did not want to do that unless she had to. It would not help the people become a community, and if they could not unite, nothing else they did would matter.
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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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Short-lived people, people who could die, did not know what enemies loneliness and boredom could be.
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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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'What will they do when they have only the herbs' he asked her.'Live or die as best they can,' she said. 'Everything truly alive dies sooner or later.'
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Now I have been raped.It happened twice. Once on Monday, and again yesterday. It is my Christmas gift from Christian America.
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Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease
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Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.