Samuel R. Delany

The artist has some internal experience that produces a poem, a painting, a piece of music. Spectators submit themselves to the work,…

— Samuel R. Delany

I suspect most of life takes place in the interstices of what's already been articulated.

— Samuel R. Delany

“But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense…

— Samuel R. Delany

In the arts, people are always waiting for someone or some movement to "fulfill her/its/his promise." Then, half-a-dozen or a dozen years…

— Samuel R. Delany

I took my writing seriously, and it seemed to pay off.

— Samuel R. Delany

“Bitch, on that world, was what men called women they were extremely fond of or extremely displeased with when the woman was…

— Samuel R. Delany

“One picks one's way about through the glass and aluminum doors, the receptionists' smiles, the lunches with too much alcohol, the openings…

— Samuel R. Delany

“Wind passed again; the iris shuddered about the diamond chip.”

— Samuel R. Delany

Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what…

— Samuel R. Delany

“It’s not that men and women are identical; it’s just that they are so near identical in all but the political abuses…

— Samuel R. Delany

“You begin to suspect, as you gaze through this you-shaped hole of insight and fire, that though it is the most important…

— Samuel R. Delany

The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at…

— Samuel R. Delany

Clouds out of control decoct anticipation. What use can any of us have for two moons? The miracle of order has run…

— Samuel R. Delany

“The mark of the truly civilized is their (truly baffling to the likes of you and me) patience with what truly baffles.”

— Samuel R. Delany

“Sometimes I cannot tell who wrote what. That is upsetting. With some sections, I can remember the place and time I wrote…

— 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

“The miracle of order has run out and I am left in an unmiraculous city where anything may happen. I don’t need…

— Samuel R. Delany

Suggestion is a literary strategy.

— 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

Honesty is the best policy ; a policy is, after all, a strategy for living in the polis in the city.

— Samuel R. Delany

The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can…

— Samuel R. Delany

As a prose writer, I work with language; and those who work with language turn to poetry for renewal.

— Samuel R. Delany

“(I also believe that the most meaningful change, where individuals can triumph over both entropy and evolution as it were, comes when…

— Samuel R. Delany

It's frightening for one artist to see another one, any other one turn away from art.

— Samuel R. Delany

The emblem of a philosophy is not that it contains a set of specific thoughts , but that it generates a way…

— Samuel R. Delany