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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.

Octavia Butler

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Octavia Butler
Another
Minds
Body
Angry
Humans
Spend
Figuring
Thing
Thoughts
Acted
Mind
Though
Stolen
Really
Everyone
Bodies
Time
Understand
Mouths
Energy
Meant

More quotes by Octavia Butler

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When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.
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We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.
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Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.
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I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.
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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.
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Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be.
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The big talent is persistence.
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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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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.
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I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.
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I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
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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.
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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.
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To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
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Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it.
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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
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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.
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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 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.
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The differences you perceive between Humans-between groups of Humans-are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments
Octavia Butler