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I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.

Octavia Butler

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Octavia Butler
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More quotes by Octavia Butler

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The differences you perceive between Humans-between groups of Humans-are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments
Octavia Butler
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Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.
Octavia Butler
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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.
Octavia Butler
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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 Butler
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Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.
Octavia Butler
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A victim of God may, Through learning adaption, Become a partner of God, A victim of God may, Through forethought and planning, Become a shaper of God. Or a victim of God may, Through shortsightedness and fear, Remain God's victim, God's plaything, God's prey.
Octavia Butler
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On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they seemed to move around each other. I wanted to play around with that.
Octavia Butler
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Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your own. You're alone, and there's no one to help you.
Octavia Butler
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I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.
Octavia Butler
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A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think you're communicating. It's so easy as a young writer to think you're been very clear when in fact you haven't.
Octavia Butler
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There's no narcotic like exhaustion.
Octavia Butler
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We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.
Octavia Butler
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I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.
Octavia Butler
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Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.
Octavia Butler
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Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status.
Octavia Butler
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A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows.
Octavia Butler
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You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Octavia Butler
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Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it.
Octavia Butler
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The essentials are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work to educate and benefit their community, their families and themselves and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.
Octavia Butler
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Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.
Octavia Butler