Quotes I Highlighted In My Copy Of 'Times Square Red, Times Square Blue'

A low-effort post

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue is, I think, the only urbanist book that is also a memoir written by a famous science fiction writer about having anonymous gay sex. If this sounds up your alley you should read it. (If you know other books up this alley you should definitely drop them in the comments.)

Samuel R. Delany has two traits that make his memoir entertaining. First, he has an obvious compassionate curiosity about humanity in all its diversity and weirdness: he sees everyone he writes about as a person who is the main character of their own story. Second, he is completely unflappable. When I run into homeless cocaine addicts, I am freaked out. When Delany runs into a homeless crack addict, he asks him about what it’s like to be a homeless crack addict, buys him a hamburger, gives him a blowjob, and then gives the crack addict five bucks on the grounds that getting sucked off is, after all, his job.

Regardless of the merits of this approach to life in general, it definitely makes your memoir entertaining.

Here I present a selection of quotes. Content note for sexuality, institutionalization, horrifying mental illness symptoms, sexual assault, and consensual sex between teenagers and adults: