“Everyone in a position of authority is hysterical, and everyone else is pretending to be asleep.”
Source: Triton (1976), Chapter 3 “Avoiding Kangaroos” (p. 54)
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Samuel R. Delany 131
American author, professor and literary critic 1942Related quotes

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page 25
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Foreword to revised edition (1982)
One Man's Meat (1942)
Context: Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me … I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment. I am fortunate indeed to have had the chance to get some of it down on paper.
“Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does not know everyone else.”
Book II, Chapter 1, p. 149
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)