187 Quotes by Samuel R. Delany

There is so much you don’t see. You walk around in a world with holes in it; you stumble into them; and get hurt.

You have to grow all the time,” I said. “Not necessarily get bigger. But inside your head you have to grow, kid-boy. For us human-type people that’s what’s important. And that kind of growing never stops. At least it shouldn’t. You can grow, kid-boy; or you can die. That’s the choice you’ve got, and it goes on all of your life.

You give me so much pleasure, why should I ever want to hurt you?

She cut through worlds, and joined them – that’s the important part – so that both became bigger.

The problem isn’t to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand.

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

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.

The sad truth is, S –, most people are not writers. This has nothing to do with literacy – or intelligence, or general culture. There are people who can correct the grammar, spelling, diction, and style of a college English paper with the best of them – who are still not writers. Indeed, most of what gets published in books, magazines, and newspapers is not written by real writers – which is one reason why so much of it is so bad.

I still believe pattern fascinates on its own. And three-sevenths of a pattern, or even a smaller fragment, can fascinate still more – get us really hunkering down, trying to tease out the whole of the figure in the carpet.