Dhalgren Quotes

“He wanted to talk and had nothing to say.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

“He shrugged. Confusion was like struggling to find the proper way to sit inside his skin.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

“Presumptuous bastard,' Tak said. 'Sunset? He might at least wait and see if there's a tomorrow morning.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

“I am limited, finite, and fixed. I am in terror of the infinity before me, having come through the one behind bringing no knowledge I can take on. I commend myself up to what is greater than I, and try to be good.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

“All you know I know: careening astronauts and bank clerks glancing at the clock before lunch; actresses cowling at light-ringed mirrors and freight elevator operators grinding a thumbful of grease on a steel handle; student riots; know that dark women in bodegas shook their heads last week because six months prices have risen outlandishly; how coffee tastes after you've held it in your mouth, cold, a whole minute.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

“I have heard the people dwelling in my land, hall-rulers, say that they had often seen two such mighty stalkers of the marches, spirits of otherwhere, haunting the moors. One of them, as they could know full well, was like unto a woman; the other miscreated being, in the image of man wandered in exile (save that he was larger than any man), whom in the olden time the people named Grendel. They knew not if he ever had a father among the spirits of darkness. They dwell in a hidden land amid wolf-haunted slopes and savage fen-paths, teh wind-swept cliffs where the mountain-stream falleth, shrouded in the mists of the headlands, its flood flowing underground.”
― Chauncey Brewster Tinker