The Mad Man Quotes

“Indeed, it is sobering to think that the Great American Novel to come will have so little to do with the famous “American Dream” but will have to be far nearer a contemporary Les Misérables.”
― Samuel R. Delany, The Mad Man: Or, The Mysteries of Manhattan

“To live within the tethers of desire is—again and again—to be shocked at how far they have come loose from reason”
― Samuel R. Delany, The Mad Man: Or, The Mysteries of Manhattan

“I like listening to you talk about things I don’t understand. It gets me hard. Hey,”
― Samuel R. Delany, The Mad Man: Or, The Mysteries of Manhattan

“Here’s the whole country, busy replacing vinyl with cassette tapes and CDs and worrying if it’s going to have to go through the whole process again a year or so from now with the new DAT tapes and mini-discs; since the Berlin Wall tumbled last November, millions are poised for the leap into cyberspace, where everything glitters and soars, but nothing dribbles or squishes; the summer is getting into spandex and roller blades; the number of AIDS cases is now within a stone’s throw, one way or the other, of a hundred thousand; awhile ago the Variety had been closed down because, said an article in the Daily News, “158 acts of unsafe sex” had been observed there by a plainclothes inspector over—what?”
― Samuel R. Delany, The Mad Man: Or, The Mysteries of Manhattan