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If there's any single talent a writer needs, it's persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell.

Octavia Butler

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Octavia Butler
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More quotes by 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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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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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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I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing.
Octavia Butler
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A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows.
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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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 would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.
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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Belief initiates and guides action - or it does nothing.
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 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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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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Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.
Octavia Butler
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There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
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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I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
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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If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you. There is no escape. What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be if escape were possible
Octavia Butler