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" We are a naturally hierarchical species. "

Octavia E. Butler

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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. "

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

" Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head? "

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. "

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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. "

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" Science fiction is not formulaic. "

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" 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

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

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

" 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

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

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

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

Octavia E. Butler

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

Octavia E. Butler

" My characters hope for better lives. "

Octavia E. Butler

" 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

" 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

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

Octavia E. Butler

" Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is. "

Octavia E. Butler

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

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

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

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

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

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

" 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

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

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

" 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