Samuel R. Delany

Quotes

1. 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.

   p. 48

2. 

   He sat cross-legged in the crumpled, body-warmed bedding, now, and looked at her beside him until his eyes ached with keeping his lids up, looking not to miss the beauty of her breathing, the faint flare of her nostrils, the rise of her chest, the movement of her skin a millimetre back and forth across her collarbone as she breathed. His eyes, flooded with her gloriousness, filled with tears. He had to blink and look away.

   p. 287

3. 

   That’s the army. But our job was to make the rest of you think it was safe and glorious and good, too. Boys into men? Discipline that isn’t self-discipline doesn’t mean thing to a boy.

   p. 324

4. 

   I must say it’s all very interesting. But I seriously don’t believe it’s anything more than a psychotic fantasy on your part.

   p. 162

5. 

   “We’re not going to climb that in the dark, are we?” asked Iimmi.

   “Better than in the light,” said Urson. “This way you can’t see how far you have to fall.”

   p. 108

6. 

   A lesson which history should have taught us thousands of years ago was finally driven home. No man can wield absolute power over other men and still retain his own mind. For no matter how good his intentions are when he takes up the power, his alternate reason is that freedom, the freedom of other people and ultimately his own, terrifies him. Only a man afraid of freedom would want this power, who could conceive of wielding it. And that fear of freedom will turn him into a slave of this power.

   p. 133

7. 

   Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what conditions existed outside their boundaries, they could get the people to fight to stay in those conditions. It was the old adage: Convince a slave that he’s free, and he will fight to maintain his slavery.

   p. 133

8. 

   I came no nearer sleep than I came to the moon.

   p. 29

That’s all the quotes.

8 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more