Samuel R. Delany Quotes - Page 3

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• Suggestion is a literary strategy.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Suggestions, Strategy

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

  Samuel R. Delany

  Language, Renewal, Turns

  Samuel R. Delany, Carl Howard Freedman (2009). “Conversations with Samuel R. Delany”, p.55, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Historically, I guess that's how science fiction works: you start by using aliens to think the unthinkable — and then, eventually, another writer, having grown a little more comfortable with the earlier notion, brings it into the human.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Thinking, Fiction, Littles

  "Space Cowboy: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany". Interview with Scott Westerfeld, www.nerve.com. 2001.

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

  Samuel R. Delany

  Gay, Black

  Samuel R. Delany, Carl Howard Freedman (2009). “Conversations with Samuel R. Delany”, p.96, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• There is a sense of decency that's like a barometer to a man's or a country's health.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Country, Men, Barometer

  Samuel R. Delany, Robert M. Williams (1964). “The towers of Toron”

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• In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Opposites, Next, Myth

  Samuel R. Delany (2011). “Einstein Intersection”, p.28, Wesleyan University Press

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• I want to read about a character doing something fairly quiet where I can picture who the character is, and what their attitude towards the world is - which I'm a lot more interested in than what they do under the pressure of a gunfight.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Attitude, Character, World

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• A poet is wounded into speech, and he examines these wounds, meticulously, to discover how to heal them. The bad poet harangues at the pain and yowls at the weapons that lacerate him; the great poet explores the inflamed lips of ruined flesh with ice-caked fingers, glittering and precise; but ultimately his poem is the echoing, dual voice reporting the damages.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Pain, Ice, Poetry

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• The poems ... are moments when I had the intensity to see, and the energy to build, some careful analog that completed the seeing. ... All I have been left is the exhausting habit of trying to tack up the slack in my life with words.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Trying, Energy, Moments

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• I am in terror of the infinity before me, having come through the one behind bringing no knowledge I can take on.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Infinity, Eternity, Terror

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• Power is all. Another falsification; I do not tell how I gain or maintain it. I only record the ginger stroll through the vaguely fetid garden of its rewards.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Power, Garden, Records

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

  Samuel R. Delany

  Art, Artist, Turns

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• The rich are always enamored of the ancient.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Ancient, Rich, Enamored

  Samuel R. Delany (1968). “Nova”

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• 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 on, others begin to realize that, really, something extraordinary was actually happening.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Art, Years, People

  Samuel R. Delany, Carl Howard Freedman (2009). “Conversations with Samuel R. Delany”, p.94, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I think of myself as a very lazy writer, though other people see it differently.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Thinking, People, Lazy

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• The idea that certain things in life - and in the universe - don't yield up their secrets is something that requires a slightly more mature reader to accept.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Yield, Things In Life, Ideas

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. August 8, 2001.

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• Like contemporary poetry, philosophy is one of those things, especially at the beginning stages, most people would rather do than study - which is why most of what gets done is so impoverished.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Philosophy, People, Done

  "The Mad Man". Book by Samuel R. Delany, 1994.

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• In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Real, Writing, Hunting

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

  Samuel R. Delany

  Life, Suspects

  Samuel R. Delany, Carl Howard Freedman (2009). “Conversations with Samuel R. Delany”, p.62, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Now for me, you're the irreplaceable one: I've never see you up so close before, and I do not understand you at all. You say sometimes I act like I don't see you? I don't even know where to look! Living with you around is like is like living with a permanent dazzle. The fact that you even like me, or look at me, or brush by me, or hug me, or hold me, is so surprising that after it's over I have to go back through it a dozen times in my head to savor it and try and figure out what it was like because I was too busy being astounded while it was happening.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Hug, Trying, Looks

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• If you are to stay in the good graces of the powerful, you had best, however unobtrusively, please the servants of the powerful.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Powerful, Grace, Servant

  Samuel R. Delany (1993). “Tales of Nevèrÿon”, p.44, Wesleyan University Press

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• Human beings being what they are, order spreads, given half a chance, almost as fast as confusion.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Order, Confusion, Half

  Samuel R. Delany (2004). “The Fall of the Towers”, Vintage

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

  Samuel R. Delany

  Survival, Boring, Minutes

  Samuel R. Delany (1993). “Tales of Nevèrÿon”, p.97, Wesleyan University Press

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• The General Public is a statistical fiction created by a few exceptional men to make the loneliness of being exceptional a little easier to bear.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Loneliness, Men, Fiction

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

  Samuel R. Delany

  Rhetoric, Discourse, Preserves

  Samuel R. Delany (2014). “The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction by Thomas M. Disch—“Angouleme””, p.150, Wesleyan University Press

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