Babel-17 Quotes

“ABSTRACT THOUGHTS in a blue room; Nominative, genitive, etative, accusative one, accusative two, ablative, partitive, illative, instructive, abessive, adessive, inessive, essive, allative, translative, comitative. Sixteen cases of the Finnish noun. Odd, some languages get by with only singular and plural. The American Indian languages even failed to distinguish number. Except Sioux, in which there was a plural only for animate objects. The blue room was round and warm and smooth. No way to say warm in French. There was only hot and tepid If there's no word for it, how do you think about it? And, if there isn't the proper form, you don't have the how even if you have the words. Imagine, in Spanish having to assign a sex to every object: dog, table, tree, can-opener. Imagine, in Hungarian, not being able to assign a sex to anything: he, she, it all the same word. Thou art my friend, but you are my king; thus the distinctions of Elizabeth the First's English. But with some oriental languages, which all but dispense with gender and number, you are my friend, you are my parent, and YOU are my priest, and YOU are my king, and YOU are my servant, and YOU are my servant whom I'm going to fire tomorrow if YOU don't watch it, and YOU are my king whose policies I totally disagree with and have sawdust in YOUR head instead of brains, YOUR highness, and YOU may be my friend, but I'm still gonna smack YOU up side the head if YOU ever say that to me again;
And who the hell are you anyway . . .?”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can't express, and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn't hurt any more: that's my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“Well, most textbooks say language is a mechanism for expressing thought. But language is thought. Thought is information given form. The form is language.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“Neurotics, proceed with delusions of grandeur. Napoleon Bonaparte, take the lead. Jesus Christ, bring up the rear. Simulate severe depression. Non-communicative with repressed hostility.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“It’s easy to repeat; it’s hard to speak,”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“Do you follow the wrestling? Most people think it's illegal, but you can watch it there. Ruby and Python are on display this evening.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“When you learn another tongue, you learn the way another people see the world, the universe.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“Do they have this word, I?’ “As a matter of fact they have three forms of it: I-below-a-temperature-of-six-degrees-centigrade, I-between-six-and-ninety-three-degrees-centigrade, and I-above-ninety-three.” The Butcher looked confused. “It has to do with their reproductive process,” Rydra explained. “When the temperature is below six degrees they’re sterile. They can only conceive when the temperature is between six and ninety-three, but to actually give birth, they have to be above ninety-three.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“there are two types of codes, ciphers, and true codes. In the first, letters, or symbols that stand for letters, are shuffled and juggled according to a pattern. In the second, letters, words, or groups of words are replaced by other letters, symbols, or words. A code can be one type or the other, or a combination. But both have this in common: once you find the key, you just plug it in and out come logical sentences. A language, however, has its own internal logic, its own grammar, its own way of putting thoughts together with words that span various spectra of meaning. There is no key you can plug in to unlock the exact meaning. At best you can get a close approximation.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“You can program a computer to make mistakes, and you do it not by crossing wires, but by manipulating the 'language' you teach it to 'think' in.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“All the misunderstandings that tie the world up and keep people apart were quivering before me at once, waiting for me to untangle them, explain them, and I couldn’t. I didn’t know the words, the grammar, the syntax.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“She cut through worlds, and joined them—that’s the important part—so that both became bigger.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“I pass beneath a fixed white line of trees where dry leaves lie for footsteps to dismember. They crackle with a muted sound like fear. That and the wind are all that I can hear. I ask cold air, “What is the word that frees?” The wind says, “Change,” and the white sun, “Remember.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“An individual, a thing apart from its environment, and apart from all things in that environment; an individual was a type of thing for which symbols were inadequate, and so names were invented . I am invented. I am not a round warm blue room. I am someone in that room; I am—”
― samuel r. delany, Babel-17

“I saw a bunch of the weirdest, oddest people I had ever met in my life, who thought different, and acted different, and even made love different. And they made me laugh, and get angry, and be happy, and be sad, and excited, and even fall in love a little myself.” He glanced up at the sphere of the wrestling arena aloft in the bar. “And they didn’t seem so weird or strange anymore.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“No way to say warm in French. There was only hot and tepid. If there’s no word for it, how do you think about it?”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“Growing older I descend November. The asymptotic cycle of the year plummets to now. In crystal reveries I pass beneath a fixed white line of trees where dry leaves lie for footsteps to dismember. They crackle with a muted sound like fear. That and the wind are all that I can hear. I ask cold air, “What is the word that frees?” The wind says, “Change,” and the white sun, “Remember.” —from Electra”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“You know the way some Orientals confuse the sounds of R and L when they speak a Western language? That’s because R and L in many Eastern languages are allophones, that is, considered the same sound, written and even heard the same—just like the th at the beginning of they and at the beginning of theater.” “What’s different about the sound of theater and they?” “Say them again and listen. One’s voiced and the other’s unvoiced, they’re as distinct as V and F; only they’re allophones—at least in British English; so Britishers are used to hearing them as though they were the same phoneme.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“When he’s connected up to your nervous system, you’ll be able to make him whistle, hiss, roar, flap his wings, and spit sparks, though it may take a few days to assimilate him into your body picture. Don’t be surprised if at first he just burps and looks seasick. Take your shirt off, please.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“He stopped, because he wasn’t sure what Cryptography had established, and because he needed another moment to haul himself down from the ledges of her high cheekbones, to retreat from the caves of her eyes.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“Oh, the bright young people who come here, with their bright, lively imaginations. They do nothing all day long but think of ways to kill. It’s a terribly placid society, really. But, why shouldn’t it be? All its aggressions are vented from nine to five. Still, I think it does something to our minds. Imagination should be used for something other than pondering murder, don’t you think?”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“a little town on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees there is only one barber. This barber shaves all the men in the town who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself or not?”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“I will probably be caught again, because that’s what happens to criminals in this universe. And maybe I will escape once more.” He shrugged. “Maybe I will not be caught again, though.” He looked at her, surprised not at her but at something in himself. “I was no I before, but now there is a reason to stay free. I will not be caught again. There is a reason.” “What is it, Butcher?” “Because I am,” he said softly, “and you are.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“The whole mechanism of guilt as a deterrent to right action is just as much a linguistic fault.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“Ron’s muscles, she thought, were living cords that snapped and sang out their messages. On this man, muscles were shields to hold the world out, the man in. And something inside was leaping up again and again, striking the shield from behind.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“All the misunderstandings that tie the world up and keep people apart were quivering before me at once, waiting for me to untangle them, explain them, and I couldn’t. I didn’t know the words, the grammar, the syntax. And”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can’t express—and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn’t hurt anymore: that’s my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can’t express—and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn’t hurt anymore: that’s my poem.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

“Neurotics proceed with delusions of grandeur. Napoleon Bonaparte take the lead. Jesus Christ bring up the rear.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17