Quotes from Octavia E. Butler

While Fledging is a different type of book, The Parable series serve as cautionary tales. I wrote the Parable books because of the direction of the country. You can call it save the world fiction, but it clearly doesn't save anything.

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

The major tragedies in life, there's just no compensation. But the minor ones you can always write about. It's my way of dealing, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than psychiatrists. The story, you see, will get you through.

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

Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt - that is, they shared - all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another.

A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think you're communicating. It's so easy as a young writer to think you're been very clear when in fact you haven't.

I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking.

People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't.

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

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.

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.

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.

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.

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

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.

I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision.

If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for?

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.

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

Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested.

I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.

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.