“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.”

American science fiction and speculative fiction author

Octavia E. Butler was an American science fiction and speculative fiction author. She won the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards, and in 1995 became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Her work helped define modern speculative fiction, and she is especially known for writing that brought discipline and force to the genre. The record here shows 113 quotes from her.