Octavia E Butler Quotes

A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time.
A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think you're communicating. It's so easy as a young writer to think you're been very clear when in fact you haven't.
And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.
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.
As a black and as a woman, I didn't think that I would really want to live in any of the eras before this, because I would inevitably be worse off. I would have spent more time struggling just to prove I was human than doing my work.
At school I was always taller than the rest of my class, and because I was an only child, I was comfortable with adults but shy and awkward with other kids. I was quiet, bookish, and in spite of my size, hopeless at sports. In short, I was different. And even in the earliest grades, I got pounded for it.
Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see.
But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical.
Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.
Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.
Getting your writing criticized can be a lot like getting skinned, and you respond to it just as enthusiastically.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is.
How dull it is to have people defining you.
I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.
I don't know how much of a market there is for space opera. Just because it's in the movies doesn't mean magazines are buying it.
I don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do.
I had a long period of writing what I think of as 'save the world' novels. 'Fledgling' was a chance to play.
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AuthorName
Octavia E. Butler
Profession
Writer
BirthDate
22 June, 1947
DeathDate
24 February, 2006
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