More Octavia E. Butler

Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired o...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead ...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing i...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun beca...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we'...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first tim...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Most vampires I have discovered are men for some reason. I guess it's because of Dracula; people...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

I don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write ab...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they enginee...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Getting your writing criticized can be a lot like getting skinned, and you respond to it just as ent...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else's troub...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to l...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

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

In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the ...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The ...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except t...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

I'm comfortably asocial - a hermit in the middle of a large city, a pessimist if I'm not car...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

The major tragedies in life, there's just no compensation. But the minor ones you can always wri...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

I do what I can,' I said. 'When I can do more, I will. You know that.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

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

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You need to look at some of the niggers they catch and bring ...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin's World War II books - a book of excerpts from the re...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there ...
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good st...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. ...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.
OCTAVIA BUTLER

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there'...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if y...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilitie...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - eve...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's ot...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done an...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your ow...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.
OCTAVIA BUTLER

While Fledging is a different type of book, The Parable series serve as cautionary tales. I wrote th...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think ...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

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

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some h...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if we poke our noses outside. So we are comforta...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops ...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilitie...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to l...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they s...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there ...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.
OCTAVIA BUTLER

I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early.
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was t...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
E. E. CUMMINGS

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Nothing recedes like progress.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Unbeing dead isn't being alive.
E. E. CUMMINGS

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more...
E. E. CUMMINGS

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.
E. E. CUMMINGS

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.
E. E. CUMMINGS

At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.
E. E. CUMMINGS

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.
E. E. CUMMINGS

It takes three to make a child.
E. E. CUMMINGS

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.
E. E. CUMMINGS Here is little Effie's head. Her brains are made of gingerbread. When the judgement day comes, God w...
E E CUMMINGS Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.
E E CUMMINGS It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.
E E CUMMINGS

He without fear is king of the world.
E. E. EDDISON

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: Amer...
E. E. CUMMINGS

Unbeing dead isn't being alive.
E. E. CUMMINGS

To be nobody but yourself in a world that's doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight th...
E. E. CUMMINGS To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't whi...
E E CUMMINGS

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.
E. E. CUMMINGS

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.
E. E. CUMMINGS

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: Amer...
E. E. CUMMINGS

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience ...
E. E. CUMMINGS

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody e...
E. E. CUMMINGS

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. ...
E. E. CUMMINGS

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blu...
E. E. CUMMINGS

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
E. E. CUMMINGS

A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own.
E. E. CUMMINGS Palm Sunday In the person of Christ, the formidable law of God, which by itself appalls us by its...
E. E. JENKINS To destroy is always the first step in any creation.
E E CUMMINGS The only man, woman, or child who ever wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical er...
E E CUMMINGS To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybod...
E E CUMMINGS To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybod...
E E CUMMINGS The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
E E CUMMINGS Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience ...
E E CUMMINGS Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.
E E CUMMINGS Life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis
E E CUMMINGS It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
E E CUMMINGS I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
E E CUMMINGS (i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
...
E E CUMMINGS

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
E. E. CUMMINGS

It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of...
E. E. CUMMINGS

To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn&#...
E. E. CUMMINGS

who knows if the moon's / a balloon, coming out of a keen city / in the sky - filled with pretty peo...
E. E. CUMMINGS

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it's always ourselves we find in the sea
E. E. CUMMINGS

The earth laughs in flowers.
E. E. CUMMINGS

The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong...
E. E. CUMMINGS

To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't whi...
E. E. CUMMINGS

I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.
E. E. CUMMINGS

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody e...
E. E. CUMMINGS

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows.Here is the root of the root and the bud of the budAnd the s...
E. E. CUMMINGS

"maggie and millie and molly and may"maggie and millie and molly and maywent down to the beach (to p...
E. E. CUMMINGS

The sensual mysticism of entire vertical being.
E. E. CUMMINGS

and it's you whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you.
E. E. CUMMINGS

I don't know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice o...
E. E. CUMMINGS

Art is a mystery.A mystery is something immeasurable.In so far as every child and woman and man may ...
E. E. CUMMINGS

Progress is a comfortable disease.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Since feeling is first, who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you, w...
E. E. CUMMINGS

Be of love (a little) more careful than of anything.
E. E. CUMMINGS

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink
E. E. CUMMINGS

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, wort...
E. E. CUMMINGS

next to of course god america i / love you land of the pilgrims and so forth oh
E. E. CUMMINGS

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everyb...
E. E. CUMMINGS

he sang his didn't he danced his did
E. E. CUMMINGS

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little -- somebody who is obses...
E. E. CUMMINGS

and down went / my Uncle / Sol / and started a worm farm
E. E. CUMMINGS

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsess...
E. E. CUMMINGS

Bless the flowers and the weeds, my birds and bees
E. E. CUMMINGS

"maggie and millie and molly and may"

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to ...
E. E. CUMMINGS

Why do you paint?
For exactly the same reason I breathe.
Thats not an answer.
There is...
E. E. CUMMINGS

When I'm 80 and sagging all over, I can tell my grandkids, 'Look, when I was a lad, 'Peo...
GERARD BUTLER

Honestly, what can really be said about 'the Jewish people' as a whole? Is it not a lamentab...
JUDITH BUTLER

I never worked less than 16-hour days on South Beach.
YANCY BUTLER

I think seeing some of the past can be helpful, especially if you're into crime solving.
YANCY BUTLER

I'll try anything once.
YANCY BUTLER

I'm open to sci-fi, but I was never a diehard fan. I have no idea why it keeps following me. I&#...
YANCY BUTLER

I'm the oldest 26-year-old I know. A lot of experience has been crammed into a short amount of t...
YANCY BUTLER

We are a naturally hierarchical species.

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Octavia E. Butler

We are a naturally hierarchical species.

Octavia E. Butler

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