187 Quotes by Samuel R. Delany

Katin tried to look reservedly doubtful. The expression was too complicated and came out blank.

Down, everybody! Down on all fours! We’re going to show you our new step! Like this: just swing your up and –.

I do not say, however, that every delusion or wandering of the mind should be called madness. Erasmus of Rotterdam, The Praise of Folly There.

To live within the tethers of desire is – again and again – to be shocked at how far they have come loose from reason.

The past is what makes now like now makes tomorrow.

I pass beneath a fixed white line of trees where dry leaves lie for footsteps to dismember. They crackle with a muted sound like fear. That and the wind are all that I can hear. I ask cold air, “What is the word that frees?” The wind says, “Change,” and the white sun, “Remember.

When a guy gets out and gets his face ground into the real world he comes up angry, wants to know how it works, and he’ll believe anybody who tells him how, right or wrong.

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

Truth is what’s important in the world. But is what’s important always the truth?