Octavia E. Butler Quotes

Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.

I am still the place where creation does some work on itself.

I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.

The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.

Most things I go through I have to write about.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

One is made by all the things around one. There are many things that have made one. For a writer to go around looking for things that have made him is asking for trouble. It's like giving a character to yourself. Can't do it. Can't do it. These things are just there. Is that enough?

Sometimes I do feel like I write the same story again and again. And for me, I am always looking for a place with a kind of redemption.

I'm not interested in nostalgia; I'm interested in who I am.

Identity for me is something that has to be played with and explored, and not become complacent about or uninterested in.

I have learned so much about myself. I have re-discovered that little boy who had the hunger to create, which I think I had lost.

I found I am not an anarchistic form creator; I'm intuitive, and I'm trying to figure out a way to explore human fragility.

You can't write about stuff you don't know about. You have to live it. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Live life to be a good songwriter.

I think understanding your life as a story is a really terrific way of kind of knowing where you are and knowing who you are.

The more I do in my life, the more I can write music about new experiences.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

Use the creative process - singing, writing, art, dance, whatever - to get to know yourself better.

Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.

I love writing and directing because it's great therapy. Every project I've done, there's been a personal connection.

If people are telling you a story about themselves, they gradually map their own local territories and know themselves by them.

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that you really must make the self.

I am very conscious of who I am as an artist and as an inspirational person.

No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.

To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.