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All Quotes by author - Octavia Butler
" And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy. "
Way
Science
Point
" And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing. "
Writing
Day
Excuses
" A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think you're communicating. It's so easy as a young writer to think you're been very clear when in fact you haven't. "
Young
Way
Think
" But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical. "
Problems
Horror
Problem
" Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about. "
Rules
You
Writing
" Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to. "
Astronomy
Research
Anthropology
" I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time. "
Writing
Science
Same
" I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things. "
Me
Savage
Things
" I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell. "
Stories
Just
Knew
" I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership. "
Leadership
Attention
Will
" I talked to members of my family, and did some personal research that didn't really have anything to do with the time and place I was writing about, but that gave me a feeling of the experience of being black in a time and place where it was very difficult to be black. "
Time
Experience
Family
" I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining. "
Science
Science Fiction
You
" I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people. "
Slavery
Trying
People
" I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early. "
Got
Early
Conscience
" I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that. "
Attention
Too
Never
" Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if 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. "
Us
Worry
Writing
" No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly. "
Doing
Business
Long
" No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities. "
Future
Think
People
" No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest. "
Writing
Me
Natural
" Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your own. You're alone, and there's no one to help you. "
Alone
Hurt
Help
" On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they seemed to move around each other. I wanted to play around with that. "
Dance
Hand
Human
" People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me. "
Like
Me
Whatever
" Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish. "
Heaven
Alive
Religion
" Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere. "
Look
Science Fiction
Science
" So fantasy was fine early on, and when I discovered science fiction, I was very happy with it, because my first interest in science fiction came with an interest in astronomy. "
Early
Fantasy
First
" Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over. "
Art
Silence
People
" The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way. "
Science
Science Fiction
Way
" Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops or classes - a workshop is where you do actually get feedback on your work, not just something where you go and sit for a day. "
Feedback
Work
People
" Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them. "
Write
Always
Writing
" What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way. "
Story
Vampire
Born
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