Samuel R. Delany Quotes

They could all know now if they wanted, but they are too embarrassed. Rolth, for three thousand years everyone has tried to find a word to differentiate men from other animals; some of the ancients called him the laughing animal, some the moral animal. Well, I wonder if he isn’t the embarrassed animal.

That’s the trouble with spies, you know. It’s not that they carry information. It’s that they carry fragmentary information, out of context, misconstrued, badly interpreted, incomplete, and misread.

In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.

Half dead’s a lot worse than dead, when you know you’re gonna die in another three, six days no matter what anyone else does.

It's a map of a non-existent coast under an imaginary constellation on an impossible sky in—" he grunted, twisting something—"the middle of a ring of meaningless numbers. That's why it's powerful. That's why it's magic.

But it's always intriguing to discover the ways in which desire fuels the systems of the world.

What real power can buy, of course, is anonymity.

Men and women are less than a chromosome apart.

I’ve always thought thinking about how to live was more important than thinking about after we die. One likes to assume death will take care of itself. It’s just a bit disconcerting to see so many other people putting so much energy into taking care of it for you. Life has always been such a surprise, death, I expect—even if it’s nothing—will be one too.

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.

To be a bandit is better than to be a slave!

It’s a good idea, when people are curious, to give them something to sustain that curiosity—and direct it.

I felt, and still feel, that it is important for fantasy to have a grasp of the complexity of fact, if not of factual content.

Bear in mind that the novel—no matter how intimate, psychological, or subjective—is always a historical projection of its own time.

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