Samuel R. Delany Quotes

American author and literary critic (born 1942)

Samuel Ray Delany Jr. (born 1 April 1942) is an award-winning science fiction author. He has written works that have garnered substantial critical acclaim, including the novels Nova, The Einstein Intersection, Hogg, and Dhalgren. He is a professor of Comparative Literature and Creative Writing at Temple University, and is also known in the academic world as a literary critic.

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Alternative Names: Samuel Ray Delany, Jr. • Samuel Ray Delany • Chip Delany • Samuel Ray "Chip" Delany, Jr. • K. Leslie Steiner • S. L. Kermit

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You're not looking for me, you know. I'm looking for you.

If you're going to do something stupid—and we all do—it might as well be a brave and foolish thing.

All life is a rhythm," she said as I sat up. "All death is rhythm suspended, a syncopation before life resumes.

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

What are you doing here?" I asked at last.
"Probably the same thing you are."
"What's that?"
She looked serious. "Why don't you tell me?"
I went back to my knife. "Sharpening my machete."
"I'm sharpening my mind," she said. "There is something to be done that will require an edge on both.

Whoever heard of La-ing or Lo-ing somebody you’re herding goats with, or laughing with, or making love with.

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.

I want to talk about love. Loving someone...I mean really loving someone...means you are willing to admit that the person you love is not what you first fell in love with, not the image you first had; and you must be able to like them still for being as close to that image as they are, and avoid disliking them for being so far away.

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.

I saw a bunch of the weirdest, oddest people I have ever met in my life, who thought different, and acted different, and even made love different. And they made me laugh, and get angry, and be happy, and be sad, and excited, and even fall in love a little....And they didn’t seem to be so weird or strange anymore.

Imagination should be used for something other than pondering murder, don’t you think?

As time progresses," Lump stated, "people learn. That's the only hope.

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."
"Is that true?"
"I don't know.

Maybe that’s the most important thing there is, Lump. If there is an answer to that question, Lump, that’s what it is, to know you’re yourself and nobody else.

You’re you, Jo. You’re you and everything that went into you, from the way you sit for hours and watch Di’k when you want to think, to the way you turn a tenth of a second faster in response to something blue than to something red. You’re all you ever thought, all you ever hoped, and all you ever hated, too. And all you've learned.