I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.
Octavia ButlerWriting 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 ButlerTo get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior. Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Octavia ButlerScience fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.
Octavia ButlerReligion is a dangerous prod, because it can always be misused and get out of hand, but it's useful for keeping people on the straight and narrow.
Octavia ButlerI'm a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocial -- a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles -- a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.
Octavia Butler