Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?
Octavia E. ButlerRead
I 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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the complexity of human nature beyond simple categories of good and evil.
Octavia E. Butler expresses that she does not limit her writing to the conventional notions of good and evil; rather, she focuses on the intricacies of human behavior and motivations. She highlights the idea that everyone, regardless of their moral standing, exhibits a range of actions and emotions, reflecting the depth and diversity of human experiences.
Themes
Human NatureGood And EvilBehaviorComplexityWriting
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about character development in literature, this quote can serve to illustrate the importance of depicting realistic human complexity.
More from Octavia E. Butler
All quotes βMy 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
In countries where there are no racial differences or no religious differences, people find other reasons to set aside one certain group of people and generally spit in their direction.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
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The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.
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If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.
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Poverty is the worst form of violence.
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We are all a part of every person we have ever met.
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