Octavia E. Butler Quotes

I take away something from every role. I'm still learning and that's what life is about.

I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books.

All through my life, when faced with a difficult decision, I always ask myself - where can I learn more. Make the choice to learn.

Hopefully I'm learning a lesson from every new thing I write, whether it features guys in spandex or not.

The change is from inner to outer. We start by dissolving our attitude not by altering outer conditions.

If you want small changes in your life, work on your attitude. But if you want big and primary changes, work on your paradigm.

I would be a poorer person if the only things I knew were what I had found out for myself.

I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.

When I really want to learn about something, I write a book on it. Then the real research begins, as I begin to hear people's stories, and huge amounts of information begins to comes straight to my doorstep. Then I can write an even better book the next time!

If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.

I've had a life that has taken many interesting paths. I've learned a lot from mentors who were instrumental in shaping me, and I want to share what I've learned.

The willingness to keep learning is, I think, the most important thing about trying to be good at anything. You never want to stop learning.

I learnt to love reading. And then I started scribbling stories, and I liked that even more.

One of the greatest and simplest tools for learning more and growing is doing more.

Writing 'when you find me,' it really exposed me to a way of putting together a story I hadn't thought of.

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

I admire when people take the harder path, not because they are masochistic and want to beat themselves up, but because you actually kind of learn more and I think you grow more.

Exposing characters and their shortcomings gives me great comfort. It's always great to write about someone more mixed up than yourself.

Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know.

I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.

The myth of writer as, like, Asperger-style misanthrope, or, like, the Jack Nicholson, 'As Good As It Gets' - it just doesn't work, because writers, in order to write good characters, need to understand people. You need to understand your audience. You need to have so much empathy you could almost encourage empathy in others.

What 'Twilight' gave me was years to consider how I wanted to work otherwise.