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

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

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.
Octavia Butler

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

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.
Octavia Butler

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.
Octavia 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 Butler

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

Most of us don’t have to worry about being shot of 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 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

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

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

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 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 Butler

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

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you’re hurt, you’re really on your own. You’re alone, and there’s no one to help you.
Octavia Butler

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.
Octavia Butler

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn’t had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish.
Octavia Butler

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

And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write – every day, no excuses. It’s so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they’d rather clean the toilet than do the writing.
Octavia Butler

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.
Octavia Butler

No… a novel is a long business. I’m a slow writer, even when I’m doing very well I write slowly.
Octavia 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 Butler

But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical.
Octavia 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 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 Butler

I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership.
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