Samuel R. Delany Quotes

I have always grappled with the fact that the truth cannot be packaged into one soul or one mind alone. It is something fragmented: there is so much to it; the truth is varied and scattered across the world.

There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.

Truth is often a multiplicity of perspectives, and sometimes the more viewpoints and versions of events there are, the closer the reader gets to an overarching truth.

There are two sides to every story, and sometimes three, four, and five.

If my subject is alive and is willing to talk to me, I will do it. But I always try to find people who were close, like lovers and family members and work colleagues - because we are what we think we are, but we're also the perception that others have of us. The truth is a sphere. There's always a hidden face.

Truth is a nebulous thing. There are certain, definite truths, but the truth of our lives goes far beyond facts.

the truth is often a mixed message

I am not struck so much by the diversity of testimony as by the many-sidedness of truth.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true.

You will not ever perceive the truth that is reality. There are many realities.

Journalists always explain that people are mad at them because they tell the truth, which is often unpleasant or uncomfortable to hear. However, they fail in situations where there is more than one truth.

Truth is splintered.

I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The damage such perception did to me I have felt ever sinceI could never belong entirely to one side of any question.

It seemed to me, in some way, especially when you're looking back at distant historical events, the "Truth" with a capital "T" is kind of the juxtaposition of all the many, many, many truths that seem true to people at the time.

One creature's truth is another's lie. (Scroom of Strix Struma)

We say that the truth will make us free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change.

There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet

Truth is whatever people will believe.

When I was young I believed that "nonfiction" meant "true." But you read a history written in, say, 1920 and a history of the same events written in 1995 and they're very different. There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.

You know the movie "Rashomon" from [Takeshi] Kurosawa, when all the people in the forest see something different? Each performance was like that.

There are always many sides to the truth.

Of course there's objective truth, but when we're looking at people's accounts of it, it seems the real truth lies in the accretion of all these different versions.

Truth lies not only in a dream, but in many dreams.

The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now— James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it? No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too.

There are many realities. There are many versions of what may appear obvious. Whatever appears as the unshakeable truth, its exact opposite may also be true in another context. After all, one's reality is but perception, viewed through various prisms of context.