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" My characters hope for better lives. "

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. "

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 used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking. "

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

" 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

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

Octavia E. Butler

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Octavia E. Butler

" 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

" I'm very happy alone. "

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

" 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

" We are a naturally hierarchical species. "

Octavia E. Butler

" The big talent is persistence. "

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

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

Octavia E. Butler

" 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

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

Octavia E. Butler

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

Octavia E. Butler

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

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

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

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

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

Octavia E. Butler

" If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? "

Octavia E. Butler

Genetic Engineering

" 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 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

" 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