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. – Octavia E. Butler
Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see. – Octavia E. Butler
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. – Octavia E. Butler
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. – Octavia E. Butler
If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? – Octavia E. Butler
Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it. – Octavia E. Butler
Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce. – Octavia E. Butler
Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don’t like to write and as little fun. – 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
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. – 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
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. – Octavia E. Butler
I don’t write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do. – Octavia E. Butler
The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn’t exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life. – Octavia E. Butler
Most vampires I have discovered are men for some reason. I guess it’s because of Dracula; people are kind of feeding off that. – Octavia E. Butler
I think people really need to think what it’s like to have all of society arrayed against you. – Octavia E. Butler