Samuel R. Delany Quotes

93 Sourced Quotes

The emblem of a philosophy is not that it contains a set of specific thoughts, but that it generates a way of thinking.

Samuel R. Delany
When what is is congruent to what is supposed, the reaction is functional and the mental processes competent. When what is and what is supposed have nothing to do with each other, the choice of reactions is random. Something tears.

Samuel R. Delany
'You spin in the sky, the world spins under you, and you step from land to land, while we...' She turned her head right, left, and her black hair curled and uncurled on the shoulder of her coat. 'We have our dull, circled lives, bound in gravity, worshiping you!'

Samuel R. Delany
In the arts, people are always waiting for someone or some movement to "fulfill her/its/his promise." Then, half-a-dozen or a dozen years on, others begin to realize that, really, something extraordinary was actually happening.

Samuel R. Delany
As a prose writer, I work with language; and those who work with language turn to poetry for renewal.

Samuel R. Delany
If you are to stay in the good graces of the powerful, you had best, however unobtrusively, please the servants of the powerful.

Samuel R. Delany
Each of us, with money, gets further and further away from those moments where the hand pulls the beet root from the soil, shakes the fish from the net into the basket -- not to mention the way it separates us from one another, so that when enough money comes between people, they lie apart like parts of a chicken hacked up for stewing.

Samuel R. Delany
You know, Mouse, I envy the captain. He's got a mission. And his obsession precludes all that wondering about what other people think of him.

Samuel R. Delany
The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand.

Samuel R. Delany
Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what conditions existed outside their boundaries, they could get the people to fight to stay in those conditions. It was the old adage: Convince a slave that he's free, and he will fight to maintain his slavery.

Samuel R. Delany
To speak the unspeakable without the proper rhetorical flourish or introduction; to muff that flourish, either by accident, misjudgment, or simple ignorance; to choose the wrong flourish or not choose any (i. e., to choose the flourish called "the literal") is to perform the unspeakable.

Samuel R. Delany
Breathing is a fascinating thing to watch in a woman.

Samuel R. Delany
We're not going to climb that in the dark, are we? asked Iimmi.
Better than in the light, said Urson. This way you can't see how far you have to fall.

Samuel R. Delany
Babes, I am so bored here that I don't think, since I've come, I've ever been more than three minutes away from some really astonishing act of violence.

Samuel R. Delany
Earth, the world, the fifth planet from the sun—the species that stands on two legs and roams this thin wet crust: it's changing, Lobey. It's not the same. Some people walk under the sun and accept that change, others close their eyes, clap their hands to their ears, and deny the world with their tongues.

Samuel R. Delany
If everything, everything were known, statistical estimates would be unnecessary. The science of probability gives mathematical expression to our ignorance, not to our wisdom.

Samuel R. Delany
The captain is different too, Cyana. Before, the Roc flew under half a man, a man who'd only known victory. Now I'm a whole man. I know defeat as well.

Samuel R. Delany
It's a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator's experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist's.

Samuel R. Delany
Oh, for the rebirth of an educational system where understanding was an essential part of knowledge.

Samuel R. Delany
Everyone in a position of authority is hysterical, and everyone else is pretending to be asleep.

Samuel R. Delany
Honesty is the best policy; a policy is, after all, a strategy for living in the polis — in the city …

Samuel R. Delany
But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it.

Samuel R. Delany
Always remember the objects you are working with. When you make a bridge, remember you are putting steel on stone and dirt. … Some day you will write poems to a little girl: marks with ink on paper. … When you are making love, you are moving flesh against flesh. That is the basis of all magic.

Samuel R. Delany
The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society's values, can force it to change.

Samuel R. Delany
You have to grow all the time, I said. Not necessarily get bigger. But inside your head you have to grow, kid-boy. For us human-type people, that's what's important. And that kind of growing never stops. At least, it shouldn't. You can grow, kid-boy, or you can die. That's the choice you've got, and it goes on all of your life.

Samuel R. Delany
Whoever heard of La-ing or Lo-ing somebody you're herding goats with, or laughing with, or making love with.

Samuel R. Delany
The whole problem, I suppose, is that any time some piece of communication strikes poor Fred, or any of the remaining Beasts, for that matter, as possibly meaningful—or is it meaningless? It's been explained to me a dozen times and I still can't get it right—anyway, his religious convictions say he has to either stop it or—barring that—refuse to be a party to it.

Samuel R. Delany
You can be bored with anything if you try hard enough.

Samuel R. Delany
She simply has no concept of what's real and what's fantasy—did I say? She's in the theater.

Samuel R. Delany
Political commitment isn't a perimeter, Sam; it's a parameter. Don't you ever wonder? Don't you ever doubt?

Samuel R. Delany