I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the early fascination and commitment of the author to the genre of science fiction.
Octavia Butler reflects on the significant role that science fiction played in her life from a young age. By starting to read and write in this genre before she reached her teenage years, she highlights the formative influence of science fiction, suggesting that it not only shaped her identity as a writer but also her understanding of creativity and imagination.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of childhood reading habits on future careers.
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
The great thing about a record is it frees your imagination; it gives your eyes a rest and lets your mind wander. There's the special thing that each record can mean a different thing to every person listening to it.
No sensible author wants anything but praise.
Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.
It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.
Poetry at its best can do you a lot of harm.
Film has to be reflecting the world that we live in, and that's all you want to be a part of. Actors inhabit the same planet as everyone else. It's a weird thing that happens when you're an actor because people hold you up because you somehow embody in parts groups of people or people's hopes or something.
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