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

Octavia E. Butler

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" The big talent is persistence. "

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

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

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

Octavia E. Butler

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

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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. "

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" 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. "

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" We are a naturally hierarchical species. "

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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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Octavia E. Butler

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" I'm not pessimistic about much of anything. "

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

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

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

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

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

" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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

" 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 very happy alone. "

Octavia E. Butler

" Science fiction is not formulaic. "

Octavia E. Butler

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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

" 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