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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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Octavia Butler
Straight
Dangerous
Hand
Religion
Prod
Hands
Misused
Women
Narrow
Always
Keeping
People
Useful

More quotes by Octavia Butler

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The big talent is persistence.
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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Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
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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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
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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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Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.
Octavia Butler
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The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.
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 literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.
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
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No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.
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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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 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.
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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Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested.
Octavia Butler
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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.
Octavia Butler
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I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing.
Octavia Butler
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Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.
Octavia Butler