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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.
Octavia E. Butler
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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.
Octavia E. Butler
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Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn’t find anything to complain about.
Octavia E. Butler
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Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.
Octavia E. Butler
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If you don’t care about my people, why should I care about yours?
Octavia E. Butler
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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.
Octavia E. Butler
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Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Octavia E. Butler
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Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease
Octavia E. Butler
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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.'
Octavia E. Butler
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He was like me - a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.
Octavia E. Butler
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Short-lived people, people who could die, did not know what enemies loneliness and boredom could be.
Octavia E. Butler
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Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.
Octavia E. Butler
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We give our deadTo the orchardsAnd the groves.We give our deadTo life.
Octavia E. Butler
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I’m literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
Octavia E. Butler
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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.
Octavia E. Butler
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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.'
Octavia E. Butler
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There’s no narcotic like exhaustion.
Octavia E. Butler
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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.
Octavia E. Butler
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A pet. In pets, free will was tolerated only as long as the pet owner found it amusing.
Octavia E. Butler
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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.
Octavia E. Butler
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'When it comes to strangers with guns,' I told her, 'I think suspicion is more likely to keep you alive than trust.'
Octavia E. Butler
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That which could hunger, could starve.
Octavia E. Butler
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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.
Octavia E. Butler
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They had clearly feared turn-of-the-century irrationality-religious overzealousness on one side, destructive hedonism on the other, with both heated by ideological intolerance and corporate greed.
Octavia E. Butler
