What makes a boy interesting does not make a man interesting. — Samuel R. Delany

"I must remember my own origins. Once I was as ignorant as you; I swear, though, I can’t remember when."

"It means you don’t like where you’ve been, the place where you are is grim, and the only place you see yourself going is not an improvement on what’s gone before."

"About drafting all the scientific students into the war effort. Maybe the war is good, but, Tomar, I’m working on my own project. All at once, the thing I want most in the world is to be left alone to work on it. And I want you, and I want to have a picnic. I’m nearly at the solution, and to have to stop and work on bomb sightings and missile trajectories…Tomar, there’s a beauty in abstract mathematics that shouldn’t be dulled with that sort of thing."

"They did not realize that reality must prove itself again and again to questioners, and that it is the fantasy which goes on without contradiction, without having to prove itself under logical rigour. The idea of asking questions was almost impossible; but only almost."

"At a certain point I came to the conclusion that one of the murderous aspects of the AIDS crisis was that people were used to not talking about sexual experiences in detail. Gay sex for instance does not cause AIDS. There are certain acts that transmit a virus and there are certain other acts that don’t transmit a virus. If you don’t talk about what goes on in sexuality, so that you know what particular acts you’re dealing with, then I think youre, possibly in an indirect way but never-the-less in a very real way, contributing to an atmosphere of ignorance which the result is people die."

"There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three."