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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. "

Octavia E. Butler

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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

" 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

" I'm very happy alone. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Science fiction is not formulaic. "

Octavia E. Butler

Science Fiction

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

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

" Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun. "

Octavia E. Butler

" 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'm not pessimistic about much of anything. "

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

" 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 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

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

Octavia E. Butler

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

Octavia E. Butler

Science Fiction

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you. "

Octavia E. Butler

" My characters hope for better lives. "

Octavia E. Butler

" 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

" 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

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

Octavia E. Butler

" My race and sex had a great deal more to do with what people believed I could do than with what I actually could do. "

Octavia E. Butler

" The big talent is persistence. "

Octavia E. Butler

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

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

" Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor. "

Octavia E. Butler

" 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