Samuel R. Delany

Oh, I cannot tell you how the notion of eternity bores me—not to mention all the silly stories we are always making up to render the idea palatable!

Yes, I learned about monsters on that trip. And I learned about them in these encounters afterward:

First, monsters are real.

Second, they are us.

I’ve always thought thinking about how to live was more important than thinking about after we die. One likes to assume death will take care of itself. It’s just a bit disconcerting to see so many other people putting so much energy into taking care of it for you. Life has always been such a surprise, death, I expect—even if it’s nothing—will be one too.

Men and women are less than a chromosome apart.

Half dead’s a lot worse than dead, when you know you’re gonna die in another three, six days no matter what anyone else does.

Myself, I suspect it’s a kind of madness: the madness that makes one repeat whatever one is trained to repeat.

For better or for worse, she found herself putting aside fear in favor of curiosity.

To be a bandit is better than to be a slave!

It is the rare society that does not abuse its artists.

Play makes a human being! Work just means you don’t have to feel guilty about playing, which I don’t feel much anyway. Mainly work means I don’t have to suffer the taunts of my friends who wonder why I’m playing as hard as I do!

Life is hard for everyone, and we must not take credit ourselves for the little that others can do with theirs. Rather look instead to whom we can give credit, if not thanks, for what little we have been able to do with our own.

To be morally upset about how other people take their sexual pleasure is surely the weirdest human quirk ever.