Samuel R. Delany

The rich are always enamored of the ancient.

— Samuel R. Delany

The past is what makes now like now makes tomorrow.

— Samuel R. Delany

Suggestion is a literary strategy.

— Samuel R. Delany

“He wanted to talk and had nothing to say.”

— Samuel R. Delany

“The word pierced him like a mouse fang.”

— Samuel R. Delany

From 1968 on, I was pretty much the black, gay SF writer.

— Samuel R. Delany

“It’s easy to repeat; it’s hard to speak,”

— Samuel R. Delany

The truth is always multiplex.

— Samuel R. Delany

“they were nice in a useless sort of way, which is, after all, the only way to be truly nice.”

— Samuel R. Delany

“So howled out for the world to give him a name. The indark answered with wind.”

— Samuel R. Delany

“He shrugged. Confusion was like struggling to find the proper way to sit inside his skin.”

— Samuel R. Delany

Apocalypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes.

— Samuel R. Delany

“There are times when you must walk by yourself because it hurts so much to be alone.”

— Samuel R. Delany

“Health lies -- implicitly -- in merging with something (matter) rather than nothing (vacuum).”

— Samuel R. Delany

Discourse says, 'You are.' Rhetoric preserves the freedom to say, 'I am not.

— Samuel R. Delany

Spending practically every minute of your day on pure survival is an absolutely boring life.

— Samuel R. Delany

Power is all. Another falsification; I do not tell how I gain or maintain it. I only record the ginger stroll through…

— Samuel R. Delany

“Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind —…

— Samuel R. Delany

“Neurotics, proceed with delusions of grandeur. Napoleon Bonaparte, take the lead. Jesus Christ, bring up the rear. Simulate severe depression. Non-communicative with…

— Samuel R. Delany

How we treat our invalids - our mad, our physically or mentally compromised family members - does tell you something about who…

— Samuel R. Delany

I'm not about either entertaining or instructing. The entertaining and instructing are secondary fallout from the fundamental thing, which is basically to…

— Samuel R. Delany

“I wanted to get out, Vyme, to keep going and not be trapped, to be free… only I was cruel. I had…

— Samuel R. Delany

“Do you follow the wrestling? Most people think it's illegal, but you can watch it there. Ruby and Python are on display…

— Samuel R. Delany

Science fiction doesn’t try to predict the future, but rather offers a significant distortion of the present…We sit around and look at…

— Samuel R. Delany

I spend a lot of time thinking, if not daydreaming. People think of me as a genre writer, and a genre writer…

— Samuel R. Delany

Actions are interesting to watch. I learn about the actors. Their movements are emblems of the tensions in this internal landscape, which…

— Samuel R. Delany

Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the…

— Samuel R. Delany

It looks like the writer is telling you a story. What the writer is actually doing, however, is using words to evoke…

— Samuel R. Delany

The night ... it is filled with bestial watchmen, trammeling the extremities and the interstices of the timeless city, portents fallen, constellated…

— Samuel R. Delany

The reason for privacy is not so that people will not know you go to the bathroom. It's to allow certain things…

— Samuel R. Delany

“The concept of a writer writing a vivid and accurate scene in a language transparent and devoid of decoration so that we…

— Samuel R. Delany

You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy…

— Samuel R. Delany

“stupidity: a process, not a state. A human being takes in far more information than he or she can put out. “Stupidity”…

— Samuel R. Delany

“The cycles of Eric’s life took in stony beaches and pine forests where you could walk in a daylight all but night…

— Samuel R. Delany

“ABSTRACT THOUGHTS in a blue room; Nominative, genitive, etative, accusative one, accusative two, ablative, partitive, illative, instructive, abessive, adessive, inessive, essive, allative,…

— Samuel R. Delany

There is a hollow, holey cylinder running from hilt to point in my machete. When I blow across the mouthpiece in the…

— Samuel R. Delany

Now for me, you're the irreplaceable one: I've never see you up so close before, and I do not understand you at…

— Samuel R. Delany

“But the point is, when the writer turns to address the reader, he or she must not only speak to me—naively dazzled…

— Samuel R. Delany

“Wars and chaoses and paradoxes ago, two mathematicians between them ended an age d began another for our hosts, our ghosts called…

— Samuel R. Delany

Since I spent eighteen years of my life as a child, and nine years of that life as a pretty sexually active…

— Samuel R. Delany