Octavia Butler Quotes

Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops or classes - a workshop is where you do actually get feedback on your work, not just something where you go and sit for a day. ~ Octavia Butler

I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early. ~ Octavia Butler

I talked to members of my family, and did some personal research that didn't really have anything to do with the time and place I was writing about, but that gave me a feeling of the experience of being black in a time and place where it was very difficult to be black. ~ Octavia Butler

Read every day and learn from what you read. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Octavia Butler, of course, is brilliant and disturbing. ~ Sarah Zettel

Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn't vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach. ~ Octavia Butler

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time. ~ Octavia Butler

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

There's no narcotic like exhaustion. ~ Octavia Butler

While Fledging is a different type of book, The Parable series serve as cautionary tales. I wrote the Parable books because of the direction of the country. You can call it save the world fiction, but it clearly doesn't save anything. ~ Octavia Butler

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

Souls! When have you seen your own soul - that you're so certain you have one? ~ Octavia Butler

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. ~ Octavia Butler

But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical. ~ Octavia Butler

It's when people begin using their religion as just a way of getting power over other people that scares me. I'm afraid that's what's going on in a lot of cases right now. When people deliberately tell lies, Creationism for instance, and pretend, "Oh, it's not really religion." I mean they know they're lying, and yet they're the religious people. There's something wrong there. ~ Octavia Butler

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish. ~ Octavia Butler

Slavery is a long slow process of dulling. ~ Octavia Butler

A tree Cannot grow In its parents' shadows. ~ Octavia Butler

Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere. ~ Octavia Butler

If there's any single talent a writer needs, it's persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell. ~ Octavia Butler

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

We need the stars ... We need purpose! We need the image the Destiny to take root among the stars gives us of ourselves as a purposeful, growing species. We need to become the adult species that the Destiny can help us become! If we're to be anything other than smooth dinosaurs who evolve, specialize and die, we need the stars ... When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness. ~ Octavia Butler

No ... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly. ~ Octavia Butler

Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage. ~ Octavia Butler

The only lasting truth is change. God is change. ~ Octavia Butler

I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing. ~ Octavia Butler

So fantasy was fine early on, and when I discovered science fiction, I was very happy with it, because my first interest in science fiction came with an interest in astronomy. ~ Octavia Butler

Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers. ~ Octavia Butler

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

I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that. ~ Octavia Butler

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. ~ Octavia Butler

I can write my own stories and I can write myself in. ~ Octavia Butler

Most of what I do is science fiction. Some of the things I do are fantasy. I don't like the labels, they're marketing tools, and I certainly don't worry about them when I'm writing. They are also inhibiting factors; you wind up not getting read by certain people, or not getting sold to certain people because they think they know what you write. You say science fiction and everybody thinks Star Wars or Star Trek. ~ Octavia Butler

The more women writers I read, from Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler to Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Toni Morrison, the less alone I felt, and the more I began to see myself as part of something more. It wasn't about one woman toiling against the universe. It was about all of us moving together, crying out into some black, inhospitable place that we would not be quiet, we would not go silently, we would not stop speaking, we would not give in. * ~ Kameron Hurley

Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if 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. ~ Octavia Butler

It's interesting how many science fiction writers get going when they are very young. I was on a program with Greg Bear and he mentioned that he had gotten started writing when he was eight. And I began writing when I was 10. I think we're influenced by the stuff, we find it and we love it and we're influenced by it ... I know I collected my first rejection slip when I was 13, and I went on collecting them for a long time after that. ~ Octavia Butler

Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn't find anything to complain about. ~ Octavia Butler

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your own. You're alone, and there's no one to help you. ~ Octavia Butler

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

We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose. ~ Octavia Butler

Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up. ~ Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler often described herself as an outsider, but within science fiction, she was loved as an insider, someone who was a fan first and came to S.F. writing as an enthusiastic reader. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. ~ Octavia Butler

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm. ~ Octavia E. Butler

As we at all times criticise the Premier for his management of home affairs, call Mr Butler a fool for his Budget, find fault with Beecham's conducting, or Gielgud's performance, can we not, sometimes, say that our cricketers are not quite so brilliant as usual? ~ Margaret Hughes

When a leader makes that fateful decision to hold one class of Soldiers to a higher standard over another that person has just set a new standard so low it doesn't register at all. ~ Donavan Nelson Butler

It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care. ~ William Butler Yeats

I'm not trying to be a different weight. I want to be a different body type so that I'm not an apple. I just want to be a pear! ~ Octavia Spencer

Elizabeth snapped awake in a terrified instant as the door to her bed chamber was flung open near dawn, and Ian stalked into the darkened room. "Do you want to go first, or shall I?" he said tightly, coming to stand at the side of her bed.
"What do you mean?" she asked in a trembling voice.
"I mean," he said, "that either you go first and tell me why in hell you suddenly find my company repugnant, or I'll go first and tell you how I feel when I don't know where you are or why you want to be there!"
"I've sent word to you both nights."
"You sent a damned note that arrived long after nightfall both times, informing me that you intended to sleep somewhere else. I want to know why!"
He has men beaten like animals, she reminded herself.
"Stop shouting at me," Elizabeth said shakily, getting out of bed and dragging the covers with her to hide herself from him.
His brows snapped together in an ominous frown. "Elizabeth?" he asked, reaching for her.
"Don't touch me!" she cried.
Bentner's voice came from the doorway. "Is aught amiss, my lady?" he asked, glaring bravely at Ian.
"Get out of here and close that damned door behind you!" Ian snapped furiously.
"Leave it open," Elizabeth said nervously, and the brave butler did exactly as she said.
In six long strides Ian was at the door, shoving it closed with a force that sent it crashing into its frame, and Elizabeth began to vibrate with terror. When he turned around and start ~ Judith McNaught

is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, but a thing to be achieved. ~ S.M. Butler

What society needs is broad men sharpened to a point. ~ Nicholas Murray Butler

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime ~ Samuel Butler

But bear in mind your lover's wage
Is what your looking-glass can show,
And that he will turn green with rage
At all that is not pictured there. ~ William Butler Yeats

We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence. ~ William Butler Yeats

Now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? ~ William Butler Yeats

We're exposed to ideas everywhere. The world is full of ideas. I think that television is a pretty powerful medium in that regard. ~ Win Butler

No one told these American soldiers they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with US patents. ~ Smedley Butler

Nothing existed in the mist but her. There were no sounds, no movement in the air. All was still and quiet. He ran his thumb over her lips. He wanted to call from the rooftops and tell her how much she meant to him, but he could only whisper. "Marry me someday. ~ Sara Butler Zalesky

It doesn't matter what's wrong with him. We're not going to act like he doesn't exist. Not anymore. ~ Carrie Butler

Offended you again," her godmother said with satisfaction. "Come along, then. We'll go to my chambers. The butler put me in one of the towers, and it's utterly heavenly, like being stuck in the clouds except for the pigeons crapping on the windows. ~ Eloisa James

I don't think people ever were free of fear of death, but clinging to life and being so unprepared for it is a modern experience. ~ Katy Butler

He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care,
Had pity on the least of things
Asleep upon a chair. ~ William Butler Yeats

On the one hand, any analysis which foregrounds one vector of power over another will doubtless become vulnerable to criticisms that it not only ignores or devalues the others, but that its own constructions depend on the exclusion of the others in order to proceed. On the other hand, any analysis which
pretends to be able to encompass every vector of power runs the risk of a certain epistemological imperialism which consists in the presupposition
that any given writer might fully stand for and explain the complexities of contemporary power. No author or text can offer such a reflection of the world, and those who claim to offer such pictures become suspect by virtue of that very claim. ~ Judith Butler

Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes. ~ Samuel Butler

I find that with fantasy, you lose yourself in it a lot. It's great to be able to go into a dark theater or turn off the lights in your house and just get sucked into this world. I remember watching Star Wars when I was a little kid when they did the re-release of all the originals. I couldn't even read yet but my uncle took me and he would read me the opening as the words were coming up on the screen. I just remember being so sucked into that and thinking, "I want to be Luke Skywalker." ~ Austin Butler

This is the only way. I will not allow humans or fairies to die when I might have prevented it." Butler would not give up. "Listen to yourself. You sound like a ... like a good guy! There's nothing in this for you. ~ Eoin Colfer

My taste in music and entertainment is quite eclectic. ~ Yancy Butler

Hold yourself on your own. A man's job in a romantic dynamic is not to be your butler, bank account or your father. ~ Amy Chan

Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed. ~ Joseph Butler

Somehow the idea of Montgomery as a fairy doesn't have the same effect on me as it appears to have on you.
-Raphael ~ Nalini Singh

Where do you live?' is ultimately a sacred question. ~ Diana Butler Bass

I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong. ~ Samuel Butler

There were only two men on the planet better educated in the various martial arts than Butler, and he was related to one of them. The other lived on an island in the South China Sea, and spent his days meditating and beating up palm trees. You had to feel sorry for the B'wa Kell. ~ Eoin Colfer

If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers. ~ William Butler Yeats

If you order some servant to bring food, I'm leaving."
"I was going to make sure Albert hadn't moved the car."
"Oh, right. Albert the butler."
"He's a valet, actually."
"You are not helping yourself. ~ Michelle Hodkin

Cole?" Sydney asked. Alyssa said, "Now that we know for sure it's a boy, I'm trying out names to see what sounds good.I like Cole."
Dante snarled. "No way. You are not naming my son Cole Stone. ~ R.E. Butler

Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness. ~ William Butler Yeats

The reality is that we are hated not because of our democracy, freedoms, and generous social security system; rather, we are hated because of our involvement in foreign conflicts and quarrels that were never our concern. ~ Amir Butler

Thus self-love as one part of human nature, and the several particular principles as the other part, are, themselves, their objects and ends, stated and shown. ~ Joseph Butler

There's an analogy I came up with once for an interviewer who asked me how much of my material was autobiographical," Octavia says. "I said that the life experience of a fiction writer is like butter in cookie dough: it's a crucial part of flavor and texture - you certainly couldn't leave it out - but if you've done it right, it can't be discerned as a separate element. There shouldn't be a place that anyone can point to and say, There--she's talking about her miscarriage, or Look--he wrote that because his wife had an affair ~ Carolyn Parkhurst

Politics is largely a matter of heart. ~ R. A. Butler