# Quote — Samuel R. Delany, Out of the Dead City

> It means you don’t like where you’ve been, the place where you are is grim, and the only place you see yourself going is not an improvement on what’s gone before.

- Author: [Samuel R. Delany](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany.md)
- Book: [Out of the Dead City](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/out-of-the-dead-city.md)
- Page: 48
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany#Out_of_the_Dead_City_(1963)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/out-of-the-dead-city/it-means-you

## More from this book

> Perhaps coming from the royal family, I had easier emotional access to a sense of Toromon’s history. Even at its best, that’s all an aristocracy is good for.

p. 62 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/out-of-the-dead-city/perhaps-coming-from.md)

> About drafting all the scientific students into the war effort. Maybe the war is good, but, Tomar, I’m working on my own project. All at once, the thing I want most in the world is to be left alone to work on it. And I want you, and I want to have a picnic. I’m nearly at the solution, and to have to stop and work on bomb sightings and missile trajectories…Tomar, there’s a beauty in abstract mathematics that shouldn’t be dulled with that sort of thing.

p. 64 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/out-of-the-dead-city/about-drafting-all.md)