Octavia E. 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."

"Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is."

"I don't know how much of a market there is for space opera. Just because it's in the movies doesn't mean magazines are buying it."

"I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you."

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

"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?'"

"I'm very happy alone."

"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."

"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."

"Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not."

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

"Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce."

"Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned."