Octavia E. Butler · 214 pages
Rating: (8.4K votes)
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.”
“Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.”
“Shyness is shit. It isn’t cute or feminine or appealing. It’s torment, and it’s shit.”
“I'm Valerie Rye,' she said, savoring the words. 'It's all right for you to talk to me.”
“What are you?" I whispered."What are we to you?"
She lay still, rested her head on her topmost coil. "You know me as no other does," she said softly. "You must decide.”
“If you work hard enough at something that doesn't matter, you can forget for a while about the things that do.”
“Read every day and learn from what you read.”
“Bloodchild" is my pregnant man story.”
“She just couldn't face caring for a child all alone.'
'People do it all the time.'
'She wasn't "people", she was herself. She knew what she could handle and what she couldn't.”
“Shyness is shit. It isn’t cute or feminine or appealing. It’s torment, and it’s shit. I”
“It’s too easy to follow bad but attractive leaders, embrace pleasurable but destructive habits, ignore looming disaster because maybe it won’t happen after all—or maybe it will only happen to other people. That kind of thinking is part of what it means to be adolescent.”
“Yes, I love your eyes—they are black and deep and almond-shaped but I see the kindness in those eyes I have never seen before,”
“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
“I drive north out of Atlanta on Interstate 75, feeling as if I’ve got an IV drip of adrenaline. I want to stop at every rest area and throw knuckleballs to Jeff. I want to stop at the Tennessee state line and throw more knuckleballs. I feel as if I’ve just been given the last big piece of a complicated puzzle, and now it all fits. Thanks to Charlie, I have the proper grip and the awareness of coming straight through the doorframe. Thanks to Tim Wakefield, I have the right arm path, releasing the ball and bringing my arm through toward my cup. Thanks to Phil, I’m firing my hips and exploding toward the plate, an action that is giving my ball a devastating finish before it gets to the plate.”
“The trick and the beauty of language is that it seems to order the whole universe, misleading us into believing that we live in sight of a rational space, a possible harmony.”
“If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.”
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