Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?
Octavia E. ButlerRead
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the idea that the act of storytelling is not just an external activity but also a process of self-discovery and identity formation.
Octavia E. Butler emphasizes the profound relationship between the stories we tell and our own identities. Through the act of writing, she suggests that we explore and understand ourselves better, as each narrative we create reflects our thoughts, emotions, and experiences. This reciprocal creation highlights the power of art and literature in shaping both the storyteller and the stories themselves.
Themes
StorytellingIdentityCreativitySelf-DiscoveryArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop to highlight the importance of personal narrative.
More from Octavia E. Butler
All quotes βI don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
My characters hope for better lives.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
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