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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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Octavia Butler
Frustration
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Writing
Hostilities
Frustrations
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Hostility

More quotes by 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
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All struggles are essentially power struggles. Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles,and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.
Octavia Butler
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No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.
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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The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.
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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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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Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.
Octavia Butler
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The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing.
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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There's no narcotic like exhaustion.
Octavia Butler
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We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.
Octavia Butler
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I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
Octavia Butler
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Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
Octavia Butler
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Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.
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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Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops or classes - a workshop is where you do actually get feedback on your work, not just something where you go and sit for a day.
Octavia Butler
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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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I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.
Octavia Butler
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When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.
Octavia Butler