"I wanted to wield together a prose luminous as twenty sets of headlights flung down a night road; I wanted my words tinged with the green of mercury vapor street lamps seen through a shaling of oak leaves in the park past midnight. I needed phrases that would break open like thunder, or leave a brush as gentle as willow boughs passed in a dark room.... The finest writing is always the finest delineation of surfaces.

Samuel Ray Delany Jr., Chip Delany to his friends, is an African American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.