Samuel R. Delany Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Important, Criminals, Elements

  FaceBook post by Samuel R. Delany from Jun 20, 2014

  52 Copy quote

• Science fiction isn’t just thinking about the world out there. It’s also thinking about how that world might be—a particularly important exercise for those who are oppressed, because if they’re going to change the world we live in, they—and all of us—have to be able to think about a world that works differently.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Exercise, Thinking, Important

  FaceBook post by Samuel R. Delany from Jun 26, 2013

  42 Copy quote

• 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

  Hands, Humanity, Problem

  FaceBook post by Samuel R. Delany from Nov 24, 2016

  31 Copy quote

• There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful city. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Beautiful, Hunting, Fire

  "Dhalgren". Book by Samuel R. Delany, January, 1975.

  45 Copy quote

• 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

  Artist, Ideas, Should

  "Dhalgren". Book by Samuel R. Delany, January, 1975.

  39 Copy quote

• The truth is always multiplex.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Truth Is

  Samuel R. Delany (1977). “Empire star”, Macmillan Reference USA

  18 Copy quote

• Science fiction doesn’t try to predict the future, but rather offers a significant distortion of the present…We sit around and look at what we see around us and we say how can the world be different

  Samuel R. Delany

  Trying, Different, Looks

  12 Copy quote

• Don't go chattering to the stars if you're going to do it with your eyes closed.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Stars, Eye, Ifs

  Samuel R. Delany (1968). “Nova”

  8 Copy quote

• Endings to be useful must be inconclusive.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Inspirational

  Samuel R. Delany (1989). “The Straits of Messina”, Serconia Pr

  5 Copy quote

• The past is what makes now like now makes tomorrow.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Past, Tomorrow

  Samuel R. Delany (1968). “Nova”

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Bored, Three

  "Dhalgren". Book by Samuel R. Delany, January, 1975.

  27 Copy quote

• The artist has some internal experience that produces a poem, a painting, a piece of music. Spectators submit themselves to the work, which generates an inner experience for them. But historically 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. That idea comes from an over-industrialized society which has learned to distrust magic.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Art, Ideas, Magic

  FaceBook post by Samuel R. Delany from Jan 16, 2017

  12 Copy quote

• It is easier to argue that something nobody believes in actually exists than it is to argue that something everybody believes in is unreal.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Believe, Belief, Arguing

  Samuel R. Delany (1993). “Tales of Nevèrÿon”, p.201, Wesleyan University Press

  8 Copy quote

• Apocalypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Ashes, Gone, Apocalypse

  12 Copy quote

• Reality must prove itself again and again to questioners ... it is the fantasy which goes on without contradiction, without having to prove itself.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Reality, Goes On, Fantasy

  Samuel R. Delany, Robert M. Williams (1964). “The towers of Toron”

  5 Copy quote

• It's only ... when we're stripped of purpose that we know who we are.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Purpose, Who We Are, Knows

  8 Copy quote

• Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Writing, Errors, Mind

  Samuel R. Delany (2013). “About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews”, p.16, Wesleyan University Press

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Self, Promise

  FaceBook post by Samuel R. Delany from May 29, 2011

  13 Copy quote

• I still believe pattern fascinates on its own. And three-sevenths of a pattern, or even a smaller fragment, can fascinate still more--get us really hunkering down, trying to tease out the whole of the figure in the carpet.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Believe, Trying, Three

  Samuel R. Delany, Carl Howard Freedman (2009). “Conversations with Samuel R. Delany”, p.59, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, Fighting, People

  Samuel R. Delany (1982). “The Jewels of Aptor”, Bantam Books

  9 Copy quote

• It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Real, Rip, Book

  FaceBook post by Samuel R. Delany from May 20, 2012

  12 Copy quote

• It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially, a mistake. We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfections on to another person. One day the phantasmagoria vanishes, and with it love dies.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Falling In Love, Mistake, Imagination

  Samuel R. Delany (2011). “Einstein Intersection”, p.108, Wesleyan University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Breathing is a fascinating thing to watch in a woman.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Breathing, Watches, Fascinating

  Samuel R. Delany (2011). “Einstein Intersection”, p.138, Wesleyan University Press

  7 Copy quote

• You meet a new person, you go with him and suddenly you get a whole new city...you go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn't even know were there. Everything changes.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Travel, Cities, House

  FaceBook post by Samuel R. Delany from Jul 28, 2012

  8 Copy quote

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

  Samuel R. Delany

  Hysterical, Pretending, Authority

  Samuel R. Delany (1977). “Triton”, Macmillan Reference USA

  7 Copy quote

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