Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

Science fiction is not formulaic.

Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world.

I'm comfortably asocial - a hermit in the middle of a large city, a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty and drive.

I'm not pessimistic about much of anything.

Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy.

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

I began writing about power because I had so little.

Power came the way a child came -- with agony.

I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?'

No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities.

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

The big talent is persistence.

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.

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.

Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that person's resolve.

How dull it is to have people defining you.

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.

BewareAt war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interestThan of any other disease

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

Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not.

The norm is white, apparently, in the view of people who see things in that way. For them, the only reason you would introduce a black character is to introduce this kind of abnormality. Usually, it's because you're telling a story about racism or at least about race.

Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce.

Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor.

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.