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The city is very different from the country, girl. It is a kind of shared consciousness that begins its work on you as soon as you enter it, if not w… - Samuel R. Delany
" "The city is very different from the country, girl. It is a kind of shared consciousness that begins its work on you as soon as you enter it, if not well before, a consciousness that begins to separate you from the country possibly even before you decide to journey toward it. It encircles you with forces much greater than the walls and gates which imitate tinier villages or towns. People who come to it come seeking the future, not realizing all that will finally affect them in it is their own, only more or less aware, involvement with the past. The way we do things here—really, that’s all there is to be learned in our precincts. But in the paving of every wide, clear avenue, in the turnings of every dark, overhung alley, in the ornaments on every cornice, in the salt-stained stones of each neighborhood cistern, there are traces of the way things once were done—which is the key to why they are done as they are today.
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About Samuel R. Delany
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.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Samuel Ray Delany, Jr.
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Samuel Ray Delany
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Chip Delany
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Samuel Ray "Chip" Delany, Jr.
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K. Leslie Steiner
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S. L. Kermit
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Additional quotes by Samuel R. Delany
At a certain point I came to the conclusion that one of the murderous aspects of the AIDS crisis was that people were used to not talking about sexual experiences in detail. Gay sex for instance does not cause AIDS. There are certain acts that transmit a virus and there are certain other acts that don’t transmit a virus. If you don’t talk about what goes on in sexuality, so that you know what particular acts you’re dealing with, then I think you're, possibly in an indirect way but never-the-less in a very real way, contributing to an atmosphere of ignorance which the result is people die.
Quotes
Jon was surprised. “You don’t believe that military discipline can be a good experience?”
“Experience is what you make it,” the officer said. “That’s real profound, huh? Boys into men? Look at the guys who like the army, or even do well there. Guys who hate the random inconsistency of their parents so much they are willing to give up love to get a father who hands out his orders by a book of rules you can run and check in the library, even if the rule is go out and die. You’ll do a lot better if you come to terms with the father you already have than by running off to the state substitute.”
Despite drunkenness, the man was maintaining logic, so Jon went on, “but doesn’t the army give you a fairly rigorous microcosm to work out certain problems of…well, honour and morality, at least for yourself—”
“Sure,” drawled the officer, “a microcosm totally safe, completely unreal, free of women and children, where God is the general and the Devil is death, and you’re playing for keeps—the excuse for conducting everything with high seriousness. It was all set up to make the most destructive and illogical human actions appear as controlled and non-random as possible.
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