Science fiction isn’t just thinking about the world out there. It’s also thinking about how that world might be—a particularly important exercise for those who are oppressed, because if they’re going to change the world we live in, they—and all of us—have to be able to think about a world that works differently.

It is easier to argue that something nobody believes in actually exists than it is to argue that something everybody believes in is unreal.

Endings to be useful must be inconclusive.

Linguistics is very much a science. It's a human science, one of the human sciences. And it's one of the more interesting human sciences.

I took my writing seriously, and it seemed to pay off.

Clouds out of control decoct anticipation. What use can any of us have for two moons? The miracle of order has run out and I am left in an unmiraculous city where anything may happen.

A number of things in Dhalgren are just meant to function as mysteries. They're mysteries when the book begins, and they're mysteries when the book ends.