Samuel R. Delany Quotes

...she looked like the sort of woman most men would want to get to know because they weren't sure what went on inside.

The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.

For me, as a film goer, I like nothing more than to sit in the cinema, have the lights go down and not know what I'm about to see or unfold on-screen. Every time we go to make a film, we do everything we can to try to systematise things so we're able to make the film in private, so that when it's finished it's up to the audience to make of it what they will.

I love mysteries. To fall into a mystery and its danger ... everything becomes so intense in those moments. When most mysteries are solved, I feel tremendously let down. So I want things to feel solved up to a point, but there's got to be a certain percentage left over to keep the dream going. It's like at the end of Chinatown: The guy says, 'Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.' You understand it, but you don't understand it, and it keeps that mystery alive. That's the most beautiful thing.

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery.

And a puzzle is for the piecing together, especially for the young, who still believe it can be done.

Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers.

Aren't you an enigma wrapped in a thick coating of contradictions.

My favorite symbols were those which I didn't understand.

Today we live in a chaos of straight lines, in a jungle of straight lines. If you do not believe this, take the trouble to count the straight lines which surround you. Then you will understand, for you will never finish counting.

The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.

We're not trying to be deliberately frustrating, but we are laying the tracks for a mystery, and it's one that we have all figured out. We wanted this to be kind of like the way that Cliff [Chang] and I felt about the Cold War in the '80s when we were 12.

I think we've always, as a species, been fascinated with stuff that we don't understand. Anytime someone can shed light on that, whether it's legit or just somebody's fantasy of what that stuff is, I think people take notice.

You may be a puzzle, but I like the way the parts fit.

I try to keep my characters raising more questions than giving answers. I don't want to leave too much on the table. I want you to have your connection and your secret understanding of the character.

When things are too clear, they are no longer interesting.

We can't say anything, but just remember that, on Fringe, nothing is as it seems. There's always a little more to the story behind the story. He's definitely a large part, going forward. A lot of things will come full circle.

I've been for 10 years trying to make something out of my life as an actor. I've learned a lot but I haven't done much that's worthwhile. So maybe if I make people wonder what I really do look like and make myself unrecognizable, they will be interested and intrigued, which eventually, of course, happened.

I’m very attracted to things that I can’t define.

I believe that the beauty of repetition is something that is not explored enough yet.

Better to try understanding the sun than a woman.

It's fun to discover things. I wouldn't want everything laid out, simply and too obviously.

One must picture everything in the world as an enigma, and live in the world as if in a vast museum of strangeness.

It is curious how much more interest can be evoked by a mixture of gossip, romance and mystery than by facts.

What if Park realized that all the things he thought were so mysterious and intriguing about her were actually just … bleak?