Octavia Butler: The Last Interview
4 stars
"My mother and my aunts and uncles had lived through the depression. They remembered hungry, jobless, desperate times. Thus, to them, even loathsome work that was secure was better than writing, which they regarded as a form of gambling. They were right about that last, of course. Writing is a form of gambling. Still, they never told me not to write, but only to be practical and not depend on writing for my living. Good advice. I ignored it, but it was good advice."
"As a child I wrote many stories about horses; I was crazy about horses. One day, when I was twelve, I was writing one of my horse stories and watching television when I noticed that I was watching a really terrible science fiction movie. I thought, 'I can do better than that.' So, I turned off the TV and I wrote a SF …
"My mother and my aunts and uncles had lived through the depression. They remembered hungry, jobless, desperate times. Thus, to them, even loathsome work that was secure was better than writing, which they regarded as a form of gambling. They were right about that last, of course. Writing is a form of gambling. Still, they never told me not to write, but only to be practical and not depend on writing for my living. Good advice. I ignored it, but it was good advice."
"As a child I wrote many stories about horses; I was crazy about horses. One day, when I was twelve, I was writing one of my horse stories and watching television when I noticed that I was watching a really terrible science fiction movie. I thought, 'I can do better than that.' So, I turned off the TV and I wrote a SF story. Reading or watching a dreadful SF story has been the impetus for a lot of science fiction writers."
"As far as criticism goes, what a reader brings to the work is as important as what I put into it, so I don't get upset when I am misinterpreted. Except when I say what I really meant was so-and-so, and I am told, 'Oh, but subconsciously you must have meant this.' I mean—leave me alone! [laughs] I don't mind attempts to interpret my fiction, but I am not willing to have critics interpret my subconscious. I doubt they are qualified."
"I thought about doing a memoir, and I tried doing it, and it felt too much like stripping in public so I gave up. Either it would have to be dreadfully dull, or it would have been giving away things that don't altogether belong to me. My novels are the best of me. My novels and short stories are the best I have to offer. What I've done all my life is tell stories. Find the things I really care about and then tell the stories."
"I took that physical anthropology class and realized that what I was really interested in was evolutionary biology. I'm not interested in it enough to actually go and do something with it, but enough to read about and write about. I can't tell you why. It's just true."
"I'm getting through some heart problems right now. And the meds that I take kind of leave me so totally washed out that I barely write anything. So I don't know what I'll be doing next, but if it isn't Fledgling I definitely have other ideas. I have ideas for at least four other novels, so things will definitely be coming eventually."