Samuel R. Delany
Award-winning science fiction author.
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.
In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.
Books! Real books were Joneny’s delight. Heavy, cumbersome, difficult to store, they were the bane of most scholars. Joneny found them entrancing. He didn’t care what was in them. Any book today was so old that each word glittered to him like the facet of a lost gem. The whole conception of a book was so at odds with this compressed, crowded, breakneck era that he was put into ecstasy by the simple heft of the paper. His own collection, some seventy volumes, was considered a pretentious luxury by everyone at the University.
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.
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.”
“I was born,” the Mouse said. “I must die. I am suffering. Help me. There, I just wrote your book for you.”
Imagination should be used for something other than pondering murder, don’t you think?
What I look for in a friend is someone who's different from me. The more different the person is, the more I'll learn from him. The more he'll come up with surprising takes on ideas and things and situations.
Whoever heard of La-ing or Lo-ing somebody you’re herding goats with, or laughing with, or making love with.
She simply has no concept of what’s real and what’s fantasy—did I say? She’s in the theater.
As morning branded the sea, darkness fell away at the far side of the beach. I turned to follow it.
Bear in mind that the novel—no matter how intimate, psychological, or subjective—is always a historical projection of its own time.
Honesty is the best policy; a policy is, after all, a strategy for living in the polis — in the city ... [ellipses in original]
The emblem of a philosophy is not that it contains a set of specific thoughts, but that it generates a way of thinking.
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.
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.
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.
Finally I just had to get out. Because when that fantasy seeps into the reality, she just becomes an incredibly ugly person. She feels she can distort anything that occurs for whatever purpose she wants. Whatever she feels, that’s what is, as far as she’s concerned.
But, like contemporary poetry, philosophy is one of those things, especially at the beginning stages, most people would rather do than study- which is why most of what gets done is so impoverished.
“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.”