187 Quotes by Samuel R. Delany

Right now I’m just a bright guy with a lot to say and nothing to say it about.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind – vividly, forcefully...

The rich are always enamored of the ancient.

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.

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

You can be bored with anything if you try hard enough.

Well, thinking about what’s not supposed to require thinking, that is philosophy, no?

The particular verbal freedom of SF, coupled with the corrective process that allows the whole range of the physically explainable universe, can produce the most violent leaps of imagery. For not only does it throw us worlds away, it specifies how we got there.

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.