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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

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" Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is. "

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" A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time. "

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" People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't. "

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" Getting your writing criticized can be a lot like getting skinned, and you respond to it just as enthusiastically. "

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" My characters hope for better lives. "

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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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" 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. "

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" I'm very happy alone. "

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" The big talent is persistence. "

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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. "

Octavia E. Butler

" I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant. "

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" Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything. "

Octavia E. Butler

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" I'm comfortably asocial - a hermit in the middle of a large city, a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty and drive. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt - that is, they shared - all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another. "

Octavia E. Butler

" I don't know how much of a market there is for space opera. Just because it's in the movies doesn't mean magazines are buying it. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world. "

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" Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. "

Octavia E. Butler

" 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. "

Octavia E. Butler

" 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. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head? "

Octavia E. Butler

" 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. "

Octavia E. Butler

" How dull it is to have people defining you. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it. "

Octavia E. Butler

" 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. "

Octavia E. Butler

" I had a long period of writing what I think of as 'save the world' novels. 'Fledgling' was a chance to play. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Science fiction is not formulaic. "

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" 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

" We are a naturally hierarchical species. "

Octavia E. Butler