Today is Samuel R. Delany Day! Celebrate by reading his writing: fiction, memoir, criticism, essays, and letters of the highest caliber. I’m constantly inspired by Delany’s virtuosity, intelligence, and iconoclasm, not to mention kindness and generosity. Here are seventy-seven quotes from Delany’s writing to celebrate his 77th birthday.
“Imagination should be used for something other than pondering murder, don’t you think?”
“In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.”
“‘All life is a rhythm…All death is rhythm suspended, a syncopation before life resumes.'”
“You can be bored with anything if you try hard enough.”
“Dull grown-ups and bright children form a particularly tolerant friendship.”
“Don’t go chattering to the stars if you’re going to do it with your eyes closed.”
“The inevitable is that unprepared for.”
“to wound the autumnal city.
So howled out for the world to give him a name.
The in-dark answered with wind.”
“‘Things have made you what you are…What you are will make you what you will become.'”
“‘An artist simply cannot trust any public emblem of merit.'”
“Everyone in a position of authority is hysterical, and everyone else is pretending to be asleep.”
“And who’s to say where life ceases and theater begins.”
“‘To write for others…it seems one must be a spy—or a teller of tales.'”
“What real power can buy, of course, is anonymity.”
“I’m a public man…That means my only meaning is the web of signs I publicly inhabit.”
“It is the rare society that does not abuse its artists.”
“The artist’s performance is always more or less aleatory.”
John Madera's fiction may be found in Conjunctions, Opium Magazine, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His criticism may be found in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.