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" Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor. "
Octavia E. Butler
Many
Factor
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Related Quotes:
" A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time. "
Octavia E. Butler
Food
Long
Long Time
" 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
" 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
Group
People
Differences
" 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
Me
Attitude
Story
" 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
Courage
People
Stronger
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head? "
Octavia E. Butler
Trauma
Just
Pain
" 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 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
" 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
" Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy. "
Octavia E. Butler
Us
Tend
Careful
" 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
Hear
Say
See
" The big talent is persistence. "
Octavia E. Butler
Big
Persistence
Talent
" 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
" I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant. "
Octavia E. Butler
How
Intolerant
Kids
" 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
Live
History
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. "
Octavia E. Butler
See
Way
You
" 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
" 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
" 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
Seen
Silent
Bullying
" If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? "
Octavia E. Butler
Genetic Engineering
Engineering
Would
" 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. "
Octavia E. Butler
Child
Short
Sports
" Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce. "
Octavia E. Butler
Black
Perception
Science
" Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it. "
Octavia E. Butler
Whatever
Will
Try
" I'm very happy alone. "
Octavia E. Butler
Happy
Alone
Very
" 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'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
" 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