I'm not about either entertaining or instructing. The entertaining and instructing are secondary fallout from the fundamental thing, which is basically to create an aesthetic object. Samuel R. Delany More Quotes by Samuel R. Delany More Quotes From Samuel R. Delany In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all. Samuel R. Delany hunting real writing When what is is congruent to what is supposed, the reaction is functional and the mental processes competent. When what is and what is supposed have nothing to do with each other, the choice of reactions is random. Something tears. Samuel R. Delany reactions tears choices I suppose the problem ... is that we have an inside and an outside. We've got problems both places, but it's so hard to tell where the one stops and the other takes up. Samuel R. Delany hard problem Now for me, you're the irreplaceable one: I've never see you up so close before, and I do not understand you at all. You say sometimes I act like I don't see you? I don't even know where to look! Living with you around is like is like living with a permanent dazzle. The fact that you even like me, or look at me, or brush by me, or hug me, or hold me, is so surprising that after it's over I have to go back through it a dozen times in my head to savor it and try and figure out what it was like because I was too busy being astounded while it was happening. Samuel R. Delany hug trying looks I was a kid who liked art and theater and dance and music, but if you lived in Harlem, high culture was somewhere else, and it wasn't black. Samuel R. Delany somewhere-else kids art There is a hollow, holey cylinder running from hilt to point in my machete. When I blow across the mouthpiece in the handle, I make music with my blade. When all the holes are covered, the sound is sad, as rough as rough can be and be called smooth. When all the holes are open, the sound pipes about, bringing to the eye flakes of sun on water, crushed metal. There are twenty holes. And since I've been playing music, I've been called all different kinds of fool - more times than Lobey, which is my name. Samuel R. Delany eye blow running 'You spin in the sky, the world spins under you, and you step from land to land, while we . . .' She turned her head right, left, and her black hair curled and uncurled on the shoulder of her coat. 'We have our dull, circled lives, bound in gravity, worshiping you!' Samuel R. Delany land sky hair Since I spent eighteen years of my life as a child, and nine years of that life as a pretty sexually active gay child, my complaint against the current attitudes is that they work mightily to silence the voices of children first and secondarily ignore what adults have to say who have been through these situations. One size fits all is never the way to handle any situation with a human dimension. Many, many children-and I was one of them-are desperate to establish some sort of sexual relation with an older and even adult figure. Samuel R. Delany gay attitude children Honesty is the best policy ; a policy is, after all, a strategy for living in the polis in the city. Samuel R. Delany strategy honesty cities Like contemporary poetry, philosophy is one of those things, especially at the beginning stages, most people would rather do than study - which is why most of what gets done is so impoverished. Samuel R. Delany done philosophy people Linguistics is very much a science. It's a human science, one of the human sciences. And it's one of the more interesting human sciences. Samuel R. Delany linguistics humans interesting Topologically, men and women are identical. Some things are just larger and more developed in one than the other and positioned differently. Samuel R. Delany men-and-women identical men In the arts, people are always waiting for someone or some movement to "fulfill her/its/his promise." Then, half-a-dozen or a dozen years on, others begin to realize that, really, something extraordinary was actually happening. Samuel R. Delany people years art The rich are always enamored of the ancient. Samuel R. Delany enamored ancient rich The General Public is a statistical fiction created by a few exceptional men to make the loneliness of being exceptional a little easier to bear. Samuel R. Delany loneliness men fiction 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. Samuel R. Delany falling-in-love imagination mistake Spending practically every minute of your day on pure survival is an absolutely boring life. Samuel R. Delany minutes boring survival Historically, I guess that's how science fiction works: you start by using aliens to think the unthinkable and then, eventually, another writer, having grown a little more comfortable with the earlier notion, brings it into the human. Samuel R. Delany littles fiction thinking The strange machinery by which a reputation precedes its source we all know is faulty. Yet how much faith we put in it! Samuel R. Delany reputation source strange The idea that certain things in life - and in the universe - don't yield up their secrets is something that requires a slightly more mature reader to accept. Samuel R. Delany yield things-in-life ideas
