Octavia E. Butler

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

The big talent is persistence.

No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.

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.

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.

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.

With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except to figure out how to adapt to it.

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

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.

I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?'

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.