Top 83 Quotes & Sayings by Octavia E. Butler - Page 2

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

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.

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.

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.

Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it.

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.

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.

Science fiction is not formulaic.

I'm not pessimistic about much of anything.

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.

Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

When I was between 2 and 3 years old, I got to know my first non-human being. The non-human was a cocker spaniel named Baba. We weren't friends, Baba and I, nor enemies. He wasn't my dog. He belonged to the people my mother worked for, and he lived in the house with them and us.

I had a long period of writing what I think of as 'save the world' novels. 'Fledgling' was a chance to play.

I had novels to write, so I wrote them.

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.

Most vampires I have discovered are men for some reason. I guess it's because of Dracula; people are kind of feeding off that.

I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.

What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.

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.

In countries where there are no racial differences or no religious differences, people find other reasons to set aside one certain group of people and generally spit in their direction.

A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time.

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.