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" The big talent is persistence. "
Octavia E. Butler
Big
Persistence
Talent
Related Quotes:
" I had novels to write, so I wrote them. "
Octavia E. Butler
Write
Novels
Them
" 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
See
Way
You
" Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy. "
Octavia E. Butler
Us
Tend
Careful
" 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
" 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
" 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
" We are a naturally hierarchical species. "
Octavia E. Butler
Species
Naturally
Hierarchical
" 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
" 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
More
Great
Race
" 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
" Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. "
Octavia E. Butler
Inspirational
Create
Me
" 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
Life
Better
Create
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor. "
Octavia E. Butler
Many
Factor
Get
" Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it. "
Octavia E. Butler
Whatever
Will
Try
" 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
" I'm very happy alone. "
Octavia E. Butler
Happy
Alone
Very
" 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
Like
Adapt
Global Warming
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
Kind
Reason
Because
" 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
" I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant. "
Octavia E. Butler
How
Intolerant
Kids
" Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything. "
Octavia E. Butler
Science Fiction
You
Science
" 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
" 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