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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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Octavia Butler
Start
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Better
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Traits
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Persistence
Crap
Valuable

More quotes by Octavia Butler

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I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.
Octavia Butler
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Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
Octavia Butler
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I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. Im trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.
Octavia Butler
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But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical.
Octavia Butler
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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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Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease
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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I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing.
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.
Octavia Butler
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I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
Octavia Butler
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Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish.
Octavia Butler
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Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
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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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 was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early.
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 tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows.
Octavia Butler
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There's no narcotic like exhaustion.
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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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