"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
— Toni Morrison

"A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. (from the introduction) "
— Stephen King (Skeleton Crew)

"Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold."
— Joseph Campbell

"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 (Empire Star)

"I was a young black man, light-skinned enough so that four out of five people who met me, of whatever race, assumed I was white.... I was a homosexual who now knew he could function heterosexually.

And I was a young writer whose early attempts had already gotten him a handful of prizes....

So, I thought, you are neither black nor white.

You are neither male nor female.

And you are that most ambiguous of citizens, the writer.

There was something at once very satisfying and very sad, placing myself at this pivotal suspension. It seemed, in the park at dawn, a kind of revelation--a kind of center, formed of a play of ambiguities, from which I might move in any direction. "
— Samuel R. Delany (The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village)