Distant Stars Quotes

“I didn't feel particularly good. But I understood: you have to respect somebody who forces you to accept his values. And in that situation, the less you agree, the more you have to respect.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“You were talking about ways of life before. Hasn't it occurred to you that there is more than one way of life possible?"

"That is too asinine for me even to bother answering.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“She shook her head, smiling sadly. "No." I wish women wouldn't smile sadly at me.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“You're being very nice."

"It's too much of a waste of time the other way.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“Sincerity is my favorite form of belligerence.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“The word pierced him like a mouse fang.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“The treasure--the real treasure--of this temple is something eternal, deadly and deathless, something that many have sought, that a few have even found."

"Eh... what is it?"

"Love," she said, and the smile, a moment before he could decide its motivation, crumbled on her face into laughter.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“Every muscle in Clikit's body began to shake. Each atom of his feral soul quivered against its neighbor.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“You like to believe that honesty is a kind of power, don't you?" Vondra said. "Many people who have neither power nor tact feel that way.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“As time progresses," Lump stated, "people learn. That's the only hope.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“...if you really want to, you can go back. But there comes a point where going back is harder than going on.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“The only man speaking was tall, thin, and grey. He wore a grey cape, grey gloves, grey boots, and his hair was grey. His voice sounded to Amos like wind over mouse fur, or sand ground into old velvet.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars

“Once Flaubert worked for several days on a single sentence, at the end of which time he had only removed one comma. Still dissatisfied (still doubting?), he continued to work on the sentence, and at the end of several more days, he had put the comma back. But now, Flaubert concluded in one of his letters, he knew why the comma was there.

I suspect even this belongs among the simple things one can say about writing. The work, not to mention the final knowledge, is not on the rational level that produces the academically acceptable explanation, but rather in that oddly blurred area where linguistic competence (the knowledge of the language everyone who can speak it shares) is flush with the writer's individual suspicions about how words can be made to mean more accurately and intensely. That's hard to talk or write about. That's why it is work.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Distant Stars