Octavia E. Butler Quotes & Sayings (Page 5)

“Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce.”

“Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor.”

“We are a naturally hierarchical species.”

“With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except to figure out how to adapt to it.”

“Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun.”

“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.”

“Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt - that is, they shared - all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another.”

“The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.”

“The major tragedies in life, there's just no compensation. But the minor ones you can always write about. It's my way of dealing, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than psychiatrists. The story, you see, will get you through.”