Samuel R. Delany Quotes

I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.

I'm like a caged animal sometimes. Let me yearn to breathe free.

We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.

The open road still softly calls.

I'd fly. I sit and watch the birds go by and say, I wish I could do that.

Wherever it's good, whatever strange, faraway land, let's go there, let's stay in that place alone.

The great home of the soul is the open road.

Travel. It was an intransitive verb. It didn't involve any destinations. It was going to the going's sake, to be anywhere but where you were, with motion itself as the only object.

The boats outside the window were always still I wondered if one of them would take me to the ocean.

Whenever spring comes to New York I can't stand the suggestion of the land that come blowing over the river from New Jersey and I've got to go. So I went.

In my mind I'm going to Carolina. Can't you see the sunshine, can't you just feel the moonshine? Ain't it just like a friend of mine, to hit me from behind, and I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind.

It’s better to look at the sky than live there

Surely no child, and few adults, have ever watched a bird in flight without envy.

Followers of trails and of seasons, breakers of camp in the little dawn wind, seekers of watercourses over the wrinkled rind of the world, o seekers, o finders of reasons to be up and be gone.

To travel like a bird, lightly to view: Deserts where stone gods founder in the sand,: Ocean embraced in a white sleep with land;: To escape time, always to start anew...: Hooded by a dark sense of destination...: Travelers, we're fabric of the road we go; We settle, but like feathers on time's flow.

I want to get away, I want to fly away. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.

Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry Along the waves dost thou fly? Oh! rather, bird, with me Through this fair land rejoice!

I live for that exhilarating moment when I'm in an airplane rushing down the runway and pull on the stick and feel lift under its wings. It's a magical feeling to climb toward the heavens, seeing objects and people on the ground grow smaller and more insignificant. You have left that world beneath you. You are inside the sky.

Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.

travel [is] flight and pursuit in equal parts.

Is it not insupportable to be held down to a canter when you long to gallop for miles?

Take my love, take my land Take me where I cannot stand I don't care, I'm still free You can't take the sky from me Take me out to the black Tell them I ain't comin' back Burn the land and boil the sea You can't take the sky from me There's no place I can be Since I found Serenity But you can't take the sky from me.

Do you remember the church across the sands? You stood outside and planned to travel the lands, where the pilgrims go. So you packed your world up inside a canvas sack, set off down the highway with your rings and Kerouac. Someone said they saw you in Nepal a long time back. Tell me why you look away, don't you have a word to say?