Samuel R. Delany: Trending quotes

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Samuel R. Delany: 262 quotes4 likes

“Life is hard for everyone, and we must not take credit ourselves for the little that others can do with theirs. Rather look instead to whom we can give credit, if not thanks, for what little we have been able to do with our own.”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Source: Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985), Chapter 2, “The Mummer’s Tale” Section 1 (p. 134)

“But that kind has not a true word in him. I wouldn’t be surprised if everything he said were a lie. Such as he lies as he breathes. Truth is something he’s never even learned to speak.”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 11 (p. 123)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

“Could it be, he wondered, he’d only thought he’d seen what he’d seen because of his own desires, researches, expectations?”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 10 (pp. 117-118)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

“I’m a public man, my princess. That means my only meaning is the web of signs I publicly inhabit.”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 10 (p. 111)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

“Life, I sometimes think—like dreams, like stories, like plans, even like lies if you will—is to be pondered on, interpreted, interrogated: but you had best not try to change it too radically in the middle, or you risk never finding its secret.”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 10 (p. 109)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

“I still feel that style is important for reading pleasure, and sex is important for pleasure in life. Each appeases a different type of desire. And while I find nothing shameful in taking direct erotic pleasure from reading or writing, I don’t think they entail a necessary relation. The processes you have me describing are contingent psychological processes. Neither marks one end nor the other of any necessary or even philosophical relationship…”

Samuel R. Delany

On including sexual themes in his writings in “Samuel R. Delany, The Art of Fiction No. 210” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6088/samuel-r-delany-the-art-of-fiction-no-210-samuel-r-delany in The Paris Review (Summer 2011)

“We’re not going to climb that in the dark, are we?”

Samuel R. Delany book The Jewels of Aptor

asked Iimmi.
“Better than in the light,” said Urson. “This way you can’t see how far you have to fall.”
Source: The Jewels of Aptor (1962), Chapter IX (p. 108)

“Oh, I cannot tell you how the notion of eternity bores me—not to mention all the silly stories we are always making up to render the idea palatable!”

Samuel R. Delany book They Fly at Çiron

Source: They Fly at Çiron (1993), Chapter 7 (p. 202)

“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.”

Samuel R. Delany book They Fly at Çiron

Source: They Fly at Çiron (1993), Chapter 6 (p. 166)

“Oh, I assure you—I’m only a little outlaw. Don’t fear me, friend. I never broke any big laws. I just forget and do what I want sometimes, and discover it wasn’t what someone else wanted me to do.”

Samuel R. Delany book They Fly at Çiron

Source: They Fly at Çiron (1993), Chapter 4 (p. 96)

“Sincerity is my favorite form of belligerence.”

Samuel R. Delany

Source: Lines of Power (1968), p. 31