Octavia E. Butler Quotes

That's the advantage of being a writer: No matter what happens, as long as you survive it, it goes into the work.

It's experiences in life that give us something to write about, and since good fiction is applied tension, you'll have an arsenal of good material if life hasn't been peachy (and not a whole lot if it has).

Writing does not exclude the full life; it demands it.

Each time I write a new piece, whether a novel, a picture book, a speech or anything, really, it has so much to do with what I'm going through personally or a problem I'm trying to work out. When I wrote my novel 'Baby,' my three children had all just gone out the door.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

Something about your life always makes its way into your stories. That's just the nature of the beast.

I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

I did a minor in creative writing in college, but I didn't start writing until I stayed at home with my own children.

Writing has always been an interest of mine, and 'The Language of Flowers' combined my experience with foster care with something I've always wanted to do.

In order to get new things to rap about, you've gotta live.

You live through stuff, and it affects the way you feel about the world, and you write about it.

You don't have to fight dragons to write books. You just have to live deeply the life you've been given.

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

I'm still getting to the good part / the breaking down / learning how to write my story.

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.

Writing, even though it's hard work, is really a joy when you get these characters to come alive. It's hard to trace where they come from. I can't say that I am sitting here one night at nine o'clock and that a character occurs to me. The magic for me happens at the typewriter.

The twisted circumstances under which we live is grist for the writing mill, the loving, hating and discovering, finding new handles for old pitchers . . .

I've always been a writer.

Favorite subject? I would have to say creative writing.

You gotta live life before you can talk about it. Sometimes when things don't work out in life, they work out on stage.

If I did anything 'next', I would do writing.

Generally, my writing is influenced by living, by absorbing everything that happens to me and my actions.

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.

Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.