# Quote — Samuel R. Delany, Tales of Neveryon

> He was learning that power—the great power that shattered lives and twisted the course of nations—was like a fog over a meadow at evening. From any distance, it seemed to have a shape, a substance, a color, an edge, yet as you approached it, it seemed to recede before you. Finally, when common sense said you were at its very center, it still seemed just as far away, only by this time it was on all sides, obscuring any vision of the world beyond it.

- Author: [Samuel R. Delany](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany.md)
- Book: [Tales of Neveryon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/tales-of-neveryon.md)
- Page: 37
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany#Tales_of_Nev%C3%A8r%C3%BFon_(1979)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/tales-of-neveryon/he-was-learning

## More from this book

> Look, if he’s alive, there’s nothing we have to do about it. If he’s dead, there’s nothing we can do.

p. 192 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/tales-of-neveryon/look-if-hes.md)

> The mark of the truly civilized is their (truly baffling to the likes of you and me) patience with what truly baffles.

p. 140 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/tales-of-neveryon/the-mark-of-the.md)

> One cannot truly trace the course of a life in a thousand pages. Let us have the reticence here not to attempt it in a thousand words.

p. 46 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/tales-of-neveryon/one-cannot-truly.md)