It's only ... when we're stripped of purpose that we know who we are. Samuel R. Delany More Quotes by Samuel R. Delany More Quotes From Samuel R. Delany The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change. Samuel R. Delany criminalselementsimportant There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful city. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful. Samuel R. Delany huntingfirebeautiful Science fiction isn’t just thinking about the world out there. It’s also thinking about how that world might be—a particularly important exercise for those who are oppressed, because if they’re going to change the world we live in, they—and all of us—have to be able to think about a world that works differently. Samuel R. Delany importantexercisethinking The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand. Samuel R. Delany problemhumanityhands Endings to be useful must be inconclusive. Samuel R. Delany inspirational The truth is always multiplex. Samuel R. Delany truth-is Science fiction doesn’t try to predict the future, but rather offers a significant distortion of the present…We sit around and look at what we see around us and we say how can the world be different Samuel R. Delany differenttryinglooks Apocalypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes. Samuel R. Delany apocalypseashesgone But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it. Samuel R. Delany selfpromiseart It’s a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator’s experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist’s. Samuel R. Delany artistshouldideas The artist has some internal experience that produces a poem, a painting, a piece of music. Spectators submit themselves to the work, which generates an inner experience for them. But historically it's a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator's experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist's. That idea comes from an over-industrialized society which has learned to distrust magic. Samuel R. Delany magicideasart 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 . Samuel R. Delany fightingcountrypeople Babes, I am so bored here that I don't think, since I've come, I've ever been more than three minutes away from some really astonishing act of violence. Samuel R. Delany boredthreethinking A sentence has meaning in the sense that a train has a track, not that a train has a passenger. Samuel R. Delany passengerssentencestrack It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind. Samuel R. Delany riprealbook There are three types of actions : purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters , to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three. Samuel R. Delany threeactioncharacter I want to read about a character doing something fairly quiet where I can picture who the character is, and what their attitude towards the world is - which I'm a lot more interested in than what they do under the pressure of a gunfight. Samuel R. Delany attitudecharacterworld Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully. Samuel R. Delany errorsmindwriting How we treat our invalids - our mad, our physically or mentally compromised family members - does tell you something about who we are politically, historically, culturally. Samuel R. Delany who-we-aremaddoe A poet is wounded into speech, and he examines these wounds, meticulously, to discover how to heal them. The bad poet harangues at the pain and yowls at the weapons that lacerate him; the great poet explores the inflamed lips of ruined flesh with ice-caked fingers, glittering and precise; but ultimately his poem is the echoing, dual voice reporting the damages. Samuel R. Delany icepainpoetry
