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" If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? "
Octavia E. Butler
Genetic Engineering
Engineering
Would
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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. "
Octavia E. Butler
Time
Destiny
Own
" 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
" 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
World
Long
Think
" 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
" I'm not pessimistic about much of anything. "
Octavia E. Butler
Anything
About
Much
" Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor. "
Octavia E. Butler
Many
Factor
Get
" 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
Woman
Live
Think
" 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
" How dull it is to have people defining you. "
Octavia E. Butler
Defining
People
How
" 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
" Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun. "
Octavia E. Butler
Difficult
Me
People
" 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
" A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time. "
Octavia E. Butler
Food
Long
Long Time
" I'm very happy alone. "
Octavia E. Butler
Happy
Alone
Very
" Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything. "
Octavia E. Butler
Science Fiction
You
Science
" 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. "
Octavia E. Butler
Travel
Truth Is
People
" 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
" My characters hope for better lives. "
Octavia E. Butler
Lives
Better
Characters
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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 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
" 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
" Getting your writing criticized can be a lot like getting skinned, and you respond to it just as enthusiastically. "
Octavia E. Butler
Your
You
Writing
" 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
" 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. "
Octavia E. Butler
Good And Evil
Good
Evil
" We are a naturally hierarchical species. "
Octavia E. Butler
Species
Naturally
Hierarchical
" 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. "
Octavia E. Butler
Group
People
Differences