Samuel R. Delany quotes - page 4

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)
So,” said Raven, "once again tonight we are presented with a mysterious sign and no way to know whether it completes a pattern or destroys one. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
Political commitment isn't a perimeter, Sam; it's a parameter. Don't you ever wonder? Don't you ever doubt? View quote
Samuel R. Delany
Perhaps it's good you're not going to write anymore: you'd have to start considering all those dull things like your relation to your audience, the relation between your personality and your poetry, the relation between your poetry and all the poetry before it. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
The parts I like, well..." He shook his head, with pursed lips. "They just don't have anything to do with me: somebody else wrote them, it seems, about things I may have thought about once. The parts I don't like--well, I can remember writing those, oh yeah, word by word by word. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
You should always tell the truth, she thought, not because one lie leads to another, but rather because one lie could so easily lead you to that terrifying position from which, with just the help of a random dream, you can see, both back and ahead, the morass where truth and falsity are simply, for you, indistinguishable. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
What real power can buy, of course, is anonymity. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
The beginning of the end, the beginning of the end,” muttered Lo Hawk. "We must preserve something.” "The end of the beginning,” sighed La Dire. "Everything must change. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
You seem to be using some sort of logical system where when you get near any explanation, you say: "By definition my problem is insoluble. Now that explanation over there would solve it. But since I've defined my problem as insoluble, then by definition that solution doesn't apply.”. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
To be a bandit is better than to be a slave! View quote
Samuel R. Delany
What I've observed-the pattern behind what I've observed-explains why what happens happens the way it does. It makes the whole process easier to see. Your idea is a possible explanation not of the observations but of a set of speculations, which, if you accepted them along with the explanation, would then only make you start seeing things and half-things where no things are. (Samuel R. Delany)
Pryn felt the reckless freedom of assertion. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
Play makes a human being! Work just means you don't have to feel guilty about playing, which I don't feel much anyway. Mainly work means I don't have to suffer the taunts of my friends who wonder why I'm playing as hard as I do! View quote
Samuel R. Delany
It's a good idea, when people are curious, to give them something to sustain that curiosity-and direct it. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
Dull grown-ups and bright children form a particularly tolerant friendship. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
She recalled her absurd attempt to construct an example-an image that, because it was constructed of things it simply did not fit, reversed the idea into an idea silly by itself, ridiculous in application-a ridiculousness that could easily, she saw, have strayed into the pernicious, the odious, or the destructive, depending on how widely one had insisted on applying it. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
to wound the autumnal city. So howled out for the world to give him a name. The in-dark answered with wind. View quote
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. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
And of course that is the problem with all truly powerful ideas. And what we have been talking of is certainly that. What it produces is illuminated by it. But applied where it does not pertain, it produces distortions as terrifying as the idea was powerful. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
In a sense, modern philosophy is a series of introductions to introductions to introductions, the movement between them controlled by the pro-tective/pro-textive play of forces about desire. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
But as soon as any of us dies, there is only the monster left. What I had been pursuing was not Belham but the monster called Belham. And what my whole journey had taught me was precisely what sort of monster it was: it was made, as all such monsters are, of contradiction, supposition, miscalculation, impossibility, and ignorance. (Samuel R. Delany)
I believe art is a wholly formal enterprise, encompassing almost all the tenets that the nineteenth century spoke of as l'art pour l'art, tenets which have made twentieth century's experimentation possible. (What postmodern doesn't?) View quote
Samuel R. Delany
I confess, the Amnewor is new to me. Yes, I've heard the name-as a minor fact in some other god's story. Precisely what it did, though, I can't remember. That, of course, makes it more intriguing. Death. It was associated with endless, mindless, pointless death. But which of them isn't? View quote
Samuel R. Delany
You understand, Pryn, I don't believe in any of it: magic, miracles, religion, the calling of the gods, named or unnamed. View quote
Samuel R. Delany
If all human production (aesthetic or otherwise) has its documentary aspect (i.e., it can be associated, by a knowledgeable reader, with a time and place), does this endanger its aesthetic aspects per se? It is the richness of the pattern that is aesthetically at stake. How many art histories does it take to make us understand that reference (a use context) and historicity are not the same? View quote
Samuel R. Delany