Samuel R. Delany

Notable Quotes



Linguistics is very much a science. It's a human science, one of the human sciences. And it's one of the more interesting human sciences.

From Samuel R. Delany

Science fiction isn't just thinking about the world out there. It's also thinking about how that world might be - a particularly important exercise for those who are oppressed, because if they're going to change the world we live in, they - and all of us - have to be able to think about a world that works differently.

From Samuel R. Delany

How we treat our invalids - our mad, our physically or mentally compromised family members - does tell you something about who we are politically, historically, culturally.

From 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 a series of micromemories from your own experience that inmix, join, and connect in your mind in an order the writer controls, so that, in effect, you have a sustained memory of something that never happened to you.

From Samuel R. Delany

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.

From Samuel R. Delany

All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original.

From Samuel R. Delany

A number of things in 'Dhalgren' are just meant to function as mysteries. They're mysteries when the book begins, and they're mysteries when the book ends.

From Samuel R. Delany

'Dhalgren' is the kind of book in which you can look for pretty much anything you want. I tried to put as much into it as I could at the time.

From 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 to go on that you don't want other people to know about, when all is said and done. But the things I don't want other people to know about are not my sex life.

From Samuel R. Delany

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

From Samuel R. Delany

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