Samuel R. Delany

Quotes

1. You're not looking for me, you know. I'm looking for you.

2. 

   Earth, the world, the fifth planet from the sun—the species that stands on two legs and roams this thin wet crust: it’s changing, Lobey. It’s not the same. Some people walk under the sun and accept that change, others close their eyes, clap their hands to their ears, and deny the world with their tongues.

3. 

   The captain is different too, Cyana. Before, the Roc flew under half a man, a man who’d only known victory. Now I’m a whole man. I know defeat as well.

   p. 142

4. 

   You know, Mouse, I envy the captain. He’s got a mission. And his obsession precludes all that wondering about what other people think of him.

   p. 158

5. 

   As morning branded the sea, darkness fell away at the far side of the beach. I turned to follow it.

6. 

   “What are you doing here?” I asked at last.

   “Probably the same thing you are.”

   “What’s that?”

   She looked serious. “Why don’t you tell me?”

   I went back to my knife. “Sharpening my machete.”

   “I'm sharpening my mind,” she said. “There is something to be done that will require an edge on both.”

7. 

   It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially, a mistake. We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfections on to another person. One day the phantasmagoria vanishes, and with it love dies.

8. 

   Don’t go chattering to the stars if you’re going to do it with your eyes closed.

   p. 197

9. 

   Perhaps it's good you're not going to write anymore: you'd have to start considering all those dull things like your relation to your audience, the relation between your personality and your poetry, the relation between your poetry and all the poetry before it.

   p. 357

10. 

    In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.

11. 

    “All life is a rhythm,” she said as I sat up. “All death is rhythm suspended, a syncopation before life resumes.”

12. 

    Dull grown-ups and bright children form a particularly tolerant friendship.

    p. 44