A Quote by Samuel R. Delany

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.
Half of Americans look at the other half and say, they're too lazy or they're not willing to get up and go to school. And the other half looks and sees a bunch of fat cats and talks about income inequality.
In India many people come to discuss things with me. I sometimes say that half of them come saying, "I have a problem, I want to find a teacher." The other half say, "I have a problem because I have a teacher!" So it's not so simple.
Chemically speaking or biologically, we research things, but we don't know half of them. We only know our half of it - symbolically - and we don't know ourselves more than half.
When people say, "Show your face, you're not ugly." I want to say, "I know. I'm not doing it because I think I'm ugly; I'm trying to have some control over my image. And I'm allowed to maintain some modicum of privacy. But also I'd like not to be picked apart or for people to observe when I put on ten pounds or I have a hair extension out of place." Most people don't have to be under that pressure, and I'd like to be one of them. I don't go on Twitter. Because when people say things like, I don't know, "I hope you get cancer and die," it hurts my feelings.
I think Roy Jones is a great fighter, a great puncher. But you know, he doesn't use the jab. But he's got everything else going for him. The problem that hurts Roy Jones in the boxing business, in the celebrity business, is his attitude. Attitude hurts, because you say a lot of things that you probably don't really mean and you say them because you don't want to be put down. But you've got a lot of people who don't like what you say, and that hurts. And that's what Roy Jones has been hurt by. That's what I have been hurt by.
A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental when the poem is good, or embarrassing or absurd when it is bad and he is not permitted to say how the good poem is good, and may never know how the bad poem is bad. It is better to write about other people's poetry.
I never know what to tell them. I mean, there's nothing you can say to make a person stop hurting. Half the time, I just feel like telling them the truth. I'd say that for 3 months, you're going to feel worse than you've ever felt and you cope as best you can. And that after 6 months, the pain isn't so bad, but it still hurts more than you think it will. And even after years, you still find yourself thinking about the person you lost and get sad about it. And you still miss them all the time.
People say bad things about me. I've had people tell me, "You know, Rush, I've been telling people to listen to you and listen to you, and I finally get 'em to do it, and then you say something so offensive, and they look me, 'You listen to this?' And I'm tired of defending you, Rush. Why do you say stupid things?" I know what this is like.
NATO was formed post-World War II. We're a little bit more than a half-century old. Do we want NATO to go on for another half-century? I think that the answer is, sitting here today: I don't know. If I had to bet on it, I would say, yeah, we have to have these alliances going forward and see who's going to pay for them.
I know a lot of you believe that most people in the news business are liberal. Let me tell you, I know a lot of them, and they were almost evenly divided this time. Half of them liked Senator Kerry; the other half hated President Bush.
At least there's nothing scary about him and hopefully he doesn't see anything scary in me. We go way back, to summer camp. We KNOW each other. People I don't know just make me want to say YIKES! I'll take history over mystery any day of the week.
It's actually a good thing if you do reference checks on somebody and half the people you call say they are a micromanager and the other half say they actually give me a lot of responsibility. That's a feature not a bug.
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
I don't think that Donald Trump is a conservative. In fact, you go on Fox News, and half the people say he is and half say he isn't.
I've discovered that half the people would love to go into space and there's no need to explain it to them. The other half can't understand and I couldn't explain it to them. If someone doesn't know why, I can't explain it.
I don't think schooling of any sort really prepares you for real life. I don't know if art school would have prepared me to draw comics. Half of the people I know in comics went to art school, half of them didn't. Some of them went and dropped out.
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