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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. "
Octavia E. Butler
Live
History
People
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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. "
Octavia E. Butler
Friends
People
Old
" At school I was always taller than the rest of my class, and because I was an only child, I was comfortable with adults but shy and awkward with other kids. I was quiet, bookish, and in spite of my size, hopeless at sports. In short, I was different. And even in the earliest grades, I got pounded for it. "
Octavia E. Butler
Child
Short
Sports
" 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?' "
Octavia E. Butler
Woman
Science
Children
" I had novels to write, so I wrote them. "
Octavia E. Butler
Write
Novels
Them
" If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? "
Octavia E. Butler
Genetic Engineering
Engineering
Would
" 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
Start
Pain
People
" 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
" How dull it is to have people defining you. "
Octavia E. Butler
Defining
People
How
" Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head? "
Octavia E. Butler
Trauma
Just
Pain
" 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
Know
Mean
Space
" Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor. "
Octavia E. Butler
Many
Factor
Get
" Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow. "
Octavia E. Butler
Me
Attitude
Story
" 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
Seen
Silent
Bullying
" A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time. "
Octavia E. Butler
Food
Long
Long Time
" 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
" 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
Alone
Animal
Eyes
" 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
" 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. "
Octavia E. Butler
Bullying
Racism
Simple
" My characters hope for better lives. "
Octavia E. Butler
Lives
Better
Characters
" Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce. "
Octavia E. Butler
Black
Perception
Science
" 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
" I'm very happy alone. "
Octavia E. Butler
Happy
Alone
Very
" 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. "
Octavia E. Butler
Life
Better
Create
" I'm not pessimistic about much of anything. "
Octavia E. Butler
Anything
About
Much
" Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is. "
Octavia E. Butler
Science
Because
Go
" 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
Like
Adapt
Global Warming
" 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
Stronger
" Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy. "
Octavia E. Butler
Us
Tend
Careful
" Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything. "
Octavia E. Butler
Science Fiction
You
Science
" Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not. "
Octavia E. Butler
Human
Acknowledge
Religion