Octavia E. Butler

“Was an eternity of absolute ease just another name for hell?”

“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.”

“Read every day and learn from what you read.”

“God is Change.Earthseed: The Books of the LivingLauren Oya Olamina”

“When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.”

“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.”

“People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.”

“Let them see that you trust them & let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions.Do that & they will commit their lives to you. Bully the, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, & after a while you'll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, & stifling their resentment.”

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

“I'm very happy alone.”

“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”

“I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.”

“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.”

“I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant.”