Science fiction is not formulaic. — Octavia E. Butler

The thing about science fiction is that it’s totally wide open. But it’s wide open in a conditional way. — Octavia Butler

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

Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything. — 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

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 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 Butler

I’m me, and I’m here, and I’m writing. — 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 wrote them. — Octavia Butler

If there’s any single talent a writer needs, it’s persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell. — Octavia Butler

I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing. — Octavia Butler

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. — Octavia Butler

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest. — Octavia Butler

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

The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble–witted that they couldn’t manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I’m me and I’m here and I’m writing. — Octavia Butler

You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. — Octavia Butler

The only lasting truth is change. God is change. — Octavia Butler

God is Change. Earthseed: The Books of the Living Lauren Oya Olamina — Octavia E. Butler

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change. — Octavia E. Butler

Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow. — Octavia E. Butler

How dull it is to have people defining you. — Octavia E. Butler

Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows. — Octavia Butler

Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers. — Octavia Butler

Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. — Octavia Butler

We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life. — Octavia Butler

I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking. — Octavia E. Butler

Be who you are and not who someone else thinks you ought to be. — Octavia Butler

We’re all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose. — Octavia 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