187 Quotes by Samuel R. Delany

I’m using “discourse” in an older sense: discourse as response, understanding, discourse as structure both conscious and unconscious: not dialogue, but what impels and structures dialogue: not the “discourse between …” but the “discourse of …

The artist has some internal experience that produces a poem, a painting, a piece of music. Spectators submit themselves to the work, which generates an inner experience for them. But historically it's a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectators experience should be identical to, or have anything to do with, the artist's. That idea comes from an over-industrialized society which has learned to distrust magic.

But aren’t journals such as this basically occasions for candid assessments?No. They’re not. They’re for telling oneself the fictions that are as honest as you can make them and still keep your life bearable.

Wind passed again; the iris shuddered about the diamond chip.

He laughed. “So you see, I’m not a nut. Not a real one, anyway. I haven’t been a real nut in a long time.

He wanted to talk and had nothing to say.

He shrugged. Confusion was like struggling to find the proper way to sit inside his skin.

I am limited, finite, and fixed. I am in terror of the infinity before me, having come through the one behind bringing no knowledge I can take on. I commend myself up to what is greater than I, and try to be good.

All you know I know: careening astronauts and bank clerks glancing at the clock before lunch; actresses cowling at light-ringed mirrors and freight elevator operators grinding a thumbful of grease on a steel handle; student riots; know that dark women in bodegas shook their heads last week because six months prices have risen outlandishly; how coffee tastes after you've held it in your mouth, cold, a whole minute.