Samuel R. Delany Quotes

Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!

Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.

She could not trust herself to hope—but without hope, she realized, she had no reason to go on.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below

I'm putting up a great front, then because I feel like I'm breaking apart inside.

I couldn't allow myself to think about her very long; if I had I would have jumped off the bridge. It's strange. I had become so reconciled to this life without her, and yet if I thought about her only for a minute it was enough to pierce the bone and marrow of my contentment and shove me back again into the agonizing gutter of my wretched past.

It's a bit like the feeling I get when I'm standing on a cliff or high building, looking down at a suicidal drop. I start thinking about what would happen if I stepped off, the rush of the fall, the shattering collision, the quiet emptiness of death. Part of me wants to experience the thrill of complete surrender.

Here's how my brain works: It's stupidity, followed by self-hatred, and then further analysis.

I'm this superphilosophical kind of person. Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions, I have this personality that makes it really hard to survive.

That's what I can't stand. I know I'll bounce back, and that's what I can't stand.

All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

The birth of a doubt that was once your belief is drowning in the tears that you cry.

Wind and storm colored July. Also, in the middle, cadaverous, awful, lay the grey puddle in the courtyard, when holding an envelope in my hand, I carried a message. I came to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather. I was wafted down tunnels. Then very gingerly, I pushed my foot across. I laid my hand against a brick wall. I returned very painfully, drawing myself back into my body over the grey, cadaverous space of the puddle. This is life then to which I am committed.

I am trying so very hard to stay in the moment despite the ferocity of my ambition.

Inside it drives me crazy, my insecurities could eat me alive.

...Choice in every form is conflict. Contradiction is inevitable in choice; this contradiction, inner and outer breeds confusion and misery.

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep.

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

Have you ever sabotaged yourself? Ever come close to victory only to slide back into the jaws of defeat? When you are fighting yourself, you can't win.

There’s no doubt in my mind that McMurphy’s won, but I’m not sure what.

There were those emotions down there, and though she couldn't quite feel them, they were strong and she feared them. It was like watching a thunderhead from high up in a plane, and though you weren't under it, you knew how it would feel if you were. You knew you'd have to land eventually.

I want, I don’t want. How can one live with such a heart?

Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night-- of the general state of mind which I have indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told in her own quiet way , a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;-- I pronounced judgment to this effect:-- That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life: that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed the poison as if it were nectar.

...You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don't know whether you're going to jump.