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First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

Octavia Butler

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Octavia Butler
Firsts
Habit
First
Inspiration
Dependable
Writing
Practice
Polish
Forget
Sustain
Help
Persistence
Whether
Finish
Helping
Brilliant
Stories
Inspired

More quotes by Octavia Butler

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And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.
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Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease
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Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.
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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.
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There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
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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.
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I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.
Octavia Butler
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I lost an arm on my last trip home.
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We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.
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Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. And once you did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though you had stolen thoughts from their minds.
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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.
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I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
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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He was like me - a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.
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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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All religions are ultimately cargo cults. Adherents perform required rituals, follow specific rules, and expect to be supernaturally gifted with desired rewards long life, honor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth, victory over opponents, immortality after death, any desired rewards.
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I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early.
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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To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior. Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Octavia Butler