Octavia E. Butler Quotes

Octavia E. Butler

Profession : Writer

Birth : June 22, 1947

The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.

Octavia E. Butler

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.

Octavia E. Butler

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.

Octavia E. Butler

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.

Octavia E. Butler

Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.

Octavia E. Butler

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.

Octavia E. Butler

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

Octavia E. Butler

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

Octavia E. Butler

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

Octavia E. Butler

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

Octavia E. Butler

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.

Octavia E. Butler

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.

Octavia E. Butler

On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they seemed to move around each other. I wanted to play around with that.

Octavia E. Butler

So fantasy was fine early on, and when I discovered science fiction, I was very happy with it, because my first interest in science fiction came with an interest in astronomy.

Octavia E. Butler

Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility.

Octavia E. Butler

Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops or classes - a workshop is where you do actually get feedback on your work, not just something where you go and sit for a day.

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.

Octavia E. Butler

Science fiction is not formulaic.

Octavia E. Butler

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

Octavia E. Butler

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.

Octavia E. Butler