top of page
"The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Creativity quotes

"It does not need to be perfect - or technically correct - to be magic."

"Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these - 'Chloe liked Olivia'. Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women."

"For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control. I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go."

"If you you write with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can."

"Then I realized the vital necessity of art. Human life, yes, you nurse people, you clean house, you market, but then comes the moment of solace and flight. i sit and write and summon other friends, other forms of life, other experiences, and the voyage and the exploration, the delving into character, the vast expanse of life's possibilities and potentialities, contemplation of future travels, of dazzling friendships, all this then makes the chores and the sacrifices beautiful because they are diverted toward some beautiful aim, they become part of the structure of a work of art."

"Often the inspiration to write music comes from the voices in your head. You're not crazy. Just be thankful they are not making you rescue people in 20-degree weather at 2:30 in the morning in the forest."

"The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth."

"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it."

"I like working among 'creative clutter'. It gives me a sense of activity and achievement."

"Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented."
Explore more quotes by 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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people."

"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."

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

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