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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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Octavia Butler
Savagery
Foreigners
Civilization
Live
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People

More quotes by Octavia Butler

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Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.
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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We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.
Octavia Butler
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He was like me - a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.
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 is a dangerous prod, because it can always be misused and get out of hand, but it's useful for keeping people on the straight and narrow.
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.
Octavia Butler
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To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
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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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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Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
Octavia Butler
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Belief initiates and guides action - or it does nothing.
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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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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I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.
Octavia Butler
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People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.
Octavia Butler
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I think climbing mountains or buildings or whatever has been a really good metaphor for finishing my work. Because no matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can't possibly do this, somehow you do.
Octavia Butler
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I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing.
Octavia Butler
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Most of us don't have to worry about being shot of we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility.
Octavia Butler
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You are horror and beauty in rare combination.
Octavia Butler