Octavia E. Butler Quotes
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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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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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Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.
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Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn’t find anything to complain about.
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If you don’t care about my people, why should I care about yours?
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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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Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
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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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He was like me - a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.
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He didn’t look all right to me. 'Has anyone gone for the doctor?''Marse Tom don’t hardly get Doc West for ague. He says all the doc knows is bleeding and blistering and purging and puking and making folks sicker than they was to start.'
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Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.
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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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Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn’t vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach.
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We give our deadTo the orchardsAnd the groves.We give our deadTo life.
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I’m literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
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Jarrett would be easier to take if he cared half as much about children’s bodies and minds as he pretends to care about their souls.
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A pet. In pets, free will was tolerated only as long as the pet owner found it amusing.
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There’s no narcotic like exhaustion.
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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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I'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer.
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I might not have believed this if a Human had said it. Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everybody had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant.
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A treeCannot growIn its parents’ shadows.
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That which could hunger, could starve.
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Nothing. It just finds you a lot more attractive than it does most Humans. What can you do with a beautiful woman that you can’t do with an ugly one? Nothing. It’s just a matter of preference.