Octavia E. Butler Quotes

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.

Become the director, producer, choreographer of your own story

If we don't tell our own stories, no one else will.

I think if I was interested in writing on my own, I would be a novelist - then you could write about yourself, and that would be it. You wouldn't need anyone else.

The actual act of writing brings me such pleasure - to tell stories, to engage in cultural criticism, to reflect, to question, all of it is invigorating.

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one.

Someone has to write all those stories: why not me?

All writers write about themselves, just as the old storytellers chose to tell stories that spoke to and about themselves. They call it the world, but it is themselves they portray. The world of which they write is like a mirror that reflects the inside of their hearts, often more truly than they know.

Africa’s story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story.

I never get sick of writing my own stories because there's a certain comfort in knowing you will never run out of material. It's relaxing, actually, to write.

Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.

I love helping someone else tell their story, but I like being the storyteller sometimes.

In the degree that we remember and retell our stories and create new ones we become the authors, the authorities, of our own lives.

You can reclaim your own narrative.

I would spend my time telling stories or writing them.

I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.

What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.

We tell the stories that we want to tell.

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

It's fun to write about myself, but I feel like I would bore people with that.

If you don't like someone's story, write your own.

I tell the stories that are of interest to me.

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.