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" Science fiction is not formulaic. "
Octavia E. Butler
Science
Science Fiction
Fiction
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is. "
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" Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything. "
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" 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. "
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" If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? "
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" Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor. "
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" I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you. "
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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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" Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. "
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" We are a naturally hierarchical species. "
Octavia E. Butler
Species
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" 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. "
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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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" 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. "
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Create
" 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
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" 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
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" Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce. "
Octavia E. Butler
Black
Perception
Science
" 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
Ambition
Insecurity
Drive
" Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy. "
Octavia E. Butler
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" Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not. "
Octavia E. Butler
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" Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun. "
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Difficult
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People
" 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. "
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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. "
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Old
" I'm very happy alone. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it. "
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" 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. "
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" A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time. "
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" 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. "
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