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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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Octavia Butler
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Whatever
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More quotes by 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 child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place, One's own people, One's own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise- Into growth and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.
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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Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.
Octavia Butler
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A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows.
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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The essentials are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work to educate and benefit their community, their families and themselves and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.
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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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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I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.
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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You are horror and beauty in rare combination.
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 was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.
Octavia Butler
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I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
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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Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.
Octavia Butler
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I lost an arm on my last trip home.
Octavia Butler
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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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And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing.
Octavia Butler