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" Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see. "
Octavia E. Butler
Hear
Say
See
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" Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not. "
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" I'm very happy alone. "
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" Science fiction is not formulaic. "
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" I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure. "
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" I had a long period of writing what I think of as 'save the world' novels. 'Fledgling' was a chance to play. "
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" Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy. "
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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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" A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time. "
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" I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?' "
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" 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. "
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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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" The norm is white, apparently, in the view of people who see things in that way. For them, the only reason you would introduce a black character is to introduce this kind of abnormality. Usually, it's because you're telling a story about racism or at least about race. "
Octavia E. Butler
Story
People
Character
" How dull it is to have people defining you. "
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People
How
" 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. "
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People
Differences
" The big talent is persistence. "
Octavia E. Butler
Big
Persistence
Talent
" I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision. "
Octavia E. Butler
Courage
People
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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. "
Octavia E. Butler
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" My characters hope for better lives. "
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Lives
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" If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? "
Octavia E. Butler
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Engineering
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" Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned. "
Octavia E. Butler
Peace
Progress
Think
" Most vampires I have discovered are men for some reason. I guess it's because of Dracula; people are kind of feeding off that. "
Octavia E. Butler
Kind
Reason
Because
" I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking. "
Octavia E. Butler
Some People
Writing
Smoking
" I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten. "
Octavia E. Butler
Me
Mother
Typewriter
" The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life. "
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" I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you. "
Octavia E. Butler
Need
You
Society
" I'm not pessimistic about much of anything. "
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" When I was between 2 and 3 years old, I got to know my first non-human being. The non-human was a cocker spaniel named Baba. We weren't friends, Baba and I, nor enemies. He wasn't my dog. He belonged to the people my mother worked for, and he lived in the house with them and us. "
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Friends
People
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" With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except to figure out how to adapt to it. "
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Like
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Global Warming
" I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant. "
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How
Intolerant
Kids
" Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested. "
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Seen
Silent
Bullying