Dan Simmons Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Dan Simmons.
Famous Quotes By Dan Simmons
This is some sort of joke, isn't it?" asks Hunt, staring at the flawless blue sky and distant fields.
I cough as lightly and briefly as possible into a handkerchief I have made from a towel borrowed from the inn. "Probably," I say. "But then, what isn't? — Dan Simmons
For seven centuries the existence of Grand Unification Theories and hyperstring post-quantum physics and Core-given understanding of the universe as self-contained and boundless, without Big Bang singularities or corresponding endpoints, had pretty much eliminated any role of God - primitively anthropomorphic or sophisticatedly post-Einsteinian - even as a caretaker or pre-Creation former of rules. The modern universe, as machine and man had come to understand it, needed no Creator; in fact, allowed no Creator. Its rules allowed very little tinkering and no major revisions. It had not begun and would not end, beyond cycles of expansion and contraction as regular and self-regulated as the seasons on Old Earth — Dan Simmons
This was, without a doubt, the cruciform of which the Bikura spoke. And it had been set here a minimum of many thousands of years ago - perhaps tens of thousands - long before mankind first left Old Earth. Almost certainly before Christ taught in Galilee. I — Dan Simmons
Tyrena did not laugh again but her smile slashed upward in a twist of green lips. "Martin, Martin, Martin," she said, "the population of literate people has been declining steadily since Gutenberg's day. By the twentieth century, less than two percent of the people in the so-called industrialized democracies read even one book a year. And that was before the smart machines, dataspheres, and user-friendly environments. — Dan Simmons
When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?
Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute? — Dan Simmons
The critic had added a personal note: Most of us, I hope, have had some child or spouse or friend like Beatrice, someone who by his very nature, his seemingly innate goodness and intelligence, makes us uncomfortably conscious of our lies when we lie. — Dan Simmons
At sunrise of the third day, I saw the corpse's chest begin to rise and fall and I heard the first intake of breath - a rasp like water being poured into a leather pouch. — Dan Simmons
For a few minutes I stood alone in her chambers, appreciating the light and silence and art. There was a van Gogh on one of the walls, worth more than most planets could pay. It was a painting of the artist's room at Arles. Madness is not a new invention. — Dan Simmons
Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings. — Dan Simmons
Finally, Weintraub had dealt with refusing all sacrifice, refusing any relationship with God except one of mutual respect and honest attempts at mutual understanding. He wrote about the multiple deaths of God and the need for a divine resurrection now that humankind had constructed its own gods and released them on the universe. — Dan Simmons
She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things - — Dan Simmons
beyond ideology and ambition, beyond thought and emotion, there was only pain. And salvation from it. — Dan Simmons
It says something about the type of writing I had been doing that my muse could flee without my noticing. For those who do not write and who never have been stirred by the creative urge, talk of muses seems a figure of speech, a quaint conceit, but for those of us who live by the Word, our muses are as real and necessary as the soft clay of language which they help to sculpt. When one is writing - really writing - it is as if one is given a fatline to the gods. No true poet has been able to explain the exhilaration one feels when the mind becomes an instrument as surely as does the pen or thought processor, ordering and expressing the revelations flowing in from somewhere else. — Dan Simmons
As long as my sixth graders showed an average improvement of five years, the principal and district pretty much left me alone to create my own curriculum and teach whatever I wanted. — Dan Simmons
After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil. — Dan Simmons
Sometimes," said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, "dreams are all that separate us from the machines. — Dan Simmons
Sol had not known he was lonely until he met Sarai. — Dan Simmons
The continuation of her life was more than another day of breathing, but was the gift of another day of engagement with her beloved across the spectrum of all things. — Dan Simmons
The Hegemony had known how to treat cancer, but most of the gene-tailoring knowledge and technology had been lost after the Fall. — Dan Simmons
Are we so sure that Christ always knew what to do next? He knew what had to be done. It is not always the same as knowing what to do. — Dan Simmons
Abraham came not to sacrifice, but to know once and for all whether this God was a god to be trusted and obeyed. No other test would do. — Dan Simmons
You are quite acute for a mental stillborn — Dan Simmons
This is all too important." Aenea smiled. "It's all too important. That's the damned problem, isn't it?" She turned her face back to the stars. — Dan Simmons
How could anyone stay sane with entire lifetimes stored in one human mind? — Dan Simmons
The young remember most deeply ... When we are old and failing, it is the memories of childhood which can be summoned most clearly. — Dan Simmons
Time sure kicks the shit out of people... — Dan Simmons
Sol, listen," came the Voice, modulated now so it did not boom from far above but almost whispered in his ear, "the future of humankind depends upon your choice. Can you offer Rachel out of love, if not obedience?" Sol heard the answer in his mind even as he groped for the words. There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always - always - returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred. Not this time. Not ever again. — Dan Simmons
They lay together in a sheltered place among the ruins of Brasilia while deathbeams from Chinese EMVs played like blue searchlights on broken ceramic walls. — Dan Simmons
Stand as I did after throwing the switch, a murderer, a betrayer, but still proud, feet firmly planted on Hyperion's shifting sand, head held high, fist raised against the sky, crying A plague on both your houses! — Dan Simmons
It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri. — Dan Simmons
Human art, Mahnmut knew, simply transcended human beings. — Dan Simmons
Mobs have passions, not brains. — Dan Simmons
Mountaineers know that all mountains are in a constant state of collapse - their verticality being inescapably and inevitably worn down every moment by wind, water, weather, and gravity - but — Dan Simmons
We all retreat into ourselves in some way. — Dan Simmons
God did not choose Herod or Pontius Pilate or Caesar Augustus as His instrument. He chose the unknown son of an unknown carpenter in one of the least important stretches of the Roman Empire. — Dan Simmons
Pain is an interesting and off-putting thing. Few if any things in life concentrate our attention so completely and terribly, and few things are more boring to listen to or read about. — Dan Simmons
A degree in psychiatry merely qualifies one to begin learning about the intricacies and foibles of the human personality. — Dan Simmons
You'll have to ask him in the next life," said Sol tiredly. "He's dead. — Dan Simmons
Men who read a lot have a more sensitive disposition, added Fowler. [ ... ]
I did not know what to say to this.
Maybe reading is a sort of curse is all I mean, concluded Fowler. Maybe it's better for a man to stay inside his own mind.
Amen, I felt like saying, although I do not know why. — Dan Simmons
I loved almost everything about being a teacher, but I was an unusual teacher. — Dan Simmons
In such seconds of decision entire futures are made. — Dan Simmons
I remembered Grandam telling me about an early Old Earth scientist, one Charles Darwin, who had come up with one of the early theories of evolution or gravitation or somesuch, and how - although raised a devout Christian even before the reward of the cruciform - he had become an atheist while studying a terrestrial wasp that paralyzed some large species of spider, planted its embryo, and let the spider recover and go about its business until it was time for the hatched wasp larvae to burrow its way out of the living spider's abdomen. — Dan Simmons
I nodded, understanding nothing. — Dan Simmons
Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatoza attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese-twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the reveling cosmos. (Yes, our DNA is unique, but so is a salamander's. Yes, we construct artifacts, but so have species ranging from beavers to the architecture ants ... Yes, we weave real fabric things from the dreamstuff of mathematics, but the universe is hardwired with arithmetic. Scratch a circle and pi peeps out. Enter a new solar system and Tycho Brahe's formulae lie waiting under the black velvet cloak of space/time. But where has the universe hidden a word under its outer layer of biology, geometry, or insensate rock?) — Dan Simmons
Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel's childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things - the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossings and connections casual, dialogues imminently forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal. — Dan Simmons
Words are the light and sound of our existence, the heat lightning by which the night is illuminated. — Dan Simmons
Each heart has its graveyard, each household its dead, And knells ring around us wherever we tread, And the feet that awhile made our pathway so bright Pass on to a land that is out of our sight. — Dan Simmons
Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers. — Dan Simmons
No one wants to pay for a look at another person's angst. — Dan Simmons
Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written. — Dan Simmons
The love of violence is an aspect of our humanity. Even the weak wish to be strong primarily so they can wield the whip. — Dan Simmons
Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity. — Dan Simmons
When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it. If it's not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your business. You just know more about what is, what isn't, and how little time there is to learn the difference. — Dan Simmons
The universe is indifferent to our fates. This was the crushing burden that the character took with him as he struggled through the surf toward survival or extinction. The universe just does not give a shit. — Dan Simmons
I desperately want to talk to her now. I want to ask her who it was who so deftly crafted and shaped the legend that was our love. — Dan Simmons
Mystery. The strangeness of place so necessary to some creative spirits. A perfect mixture of the classical utopia and the pagan mystery. — Dan Simmons
Its hard to die. Harder to live — Dan Simmons
You treat violence as an aberration ... when in truth it is the norm. It is the very essence of the human condition. — Dan Simmons
I found no muse on Hyperion during those first years. For many, the expansion of distance because of limited transportation - EMVs were unreliable, skimmers scarce - and the contraction of artificial consciousness due to absence of datasphere, no access to the All Thing, and only one fatline transmitter - all led to a renewal of creative energies, a new realization of what it meant to be human and an artist. Or so I heard. No muse appeared. My verse continued to be technically proficient and dead as Huck Finn's cat. I decided to kill myself. — Dan Simmons
The sunset was that long, achingly beautiful balance of stillness in which the sun seemed to hover like a red balloon above the western horizon, the entire sky catching fire from the death of day; a sunset unique to the American Midwest and ignored by most of its inhabitants. The twilight brought the promise of coolness and the certain threat of night. — Dan Simmons
Like your kind/
we usually destroy
what we cannot understand — Dan Simmons
It is a mystery, and to tell the truth, I am intrigued by mysteries even if this is to be my last week of enjoying them. I would welcome some glimmer of understanding but, failing that, working on the puzzle will suffice. — Dan Simmons
After ten standard months I was done, acknowledging the ancient aphorism to the effect that no book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned. — Dan Simmons
Commander Lebedev wrote - 'After a communication session we invited Flight Engineer Savitskaya to the heavily laden table. We gave Sveta a blue floral print apron and told her, " 'Look, Sveta, even though you are a pilot and cosmonaut, you are still a woman first. Would you please do us the honor of being our hostess tonight?' "
"Ouch," says Roth — Dan Simmons
Power: a currency that never went out of style. — Dan Simmons
In the months since Challenger, Baedecker had found it hard to believe that the country had ever flown so frequently and competently into space. The long hiatus of earthbound doubt in which nothing flew had become the normal state of things to Baedecker, mixing in his own mind with a dreary sense of heaviness, of entropy and gravity triumphant. — Dan Simmons
If there is a God, I thought, it's a painkiller. — Dan Simmons
All those before us have gone into the darkness without assurance of logic or fact or persuasive theory, with only a slender thread of hope or all too shakable convention of faith. And they have been able to sustain that slim hope in the face of darkness, then so must I. — Dan Simmons
Love is nothing but lust misspelled. — Dan Simmons
Alone with the Morlocks, thought Silenus. But not even Morlocks for company in the end. Only my muse. There — Dan Simmons
Thus evolved some members of the Core - not altruists, but desperate survivalists who realized that the only way ultimately to win their never-ending zero-sum game was to stop the game. And to stop the game they needed to evolve into a species capable of empathy. — Dan Simmons
If our god's work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves. — Dan Simmons
It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another. — Dan Simmons
It's one of the strangest attributes of this profession that when we writers get exhausted writing one thing, we relax by writing another. — Dan Simmons
Fate and victory shift ... now this way, now that way
like a line of unarmored men under a hail of enemy arrows. — Dan Simmons
But Siri knew the slow pace of books and the cadences of theater under the stars. I knew only the stars. — Dan Simmons
I think one begins to feel when things aren't important. I'm not sure how to put it. When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it. If it's not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your business. You just know more about what is, what isn't, and how little time there is to learn the difference. Do you understand, Merin? Do you follow me even a little bit? — Dan Simmons
Sometimes Duane imagined that he was the single crewman on a receding starship, already light-years from Earth, unable to turn around, doomed never to return, unable even to reach his destination in a human lifetime, but still connected by this expanding arc of electromagnetic radiation, rising now through the onionlike layers of old radio shows, traveling back in time as he traveled forward in space, listening to voices whose owners had long since died, moving back toward Marconi and then silence. — Dan Simmons
Nothing helps an artist's career more than a little death and obscurity. — Dan Simmons
Barbarians, we call them, while all the while we timidly cling to our Web like Visigoths crouching in the ruins of Rome's faded glory and proclaim ourselves civilized. — Dan Simmons
No nation was better at creating metaphors for itself than America; in this case, the vision of a beautiful, sane, safe, marble future that is all dream and no marble to sustain it. — Dan Simmons
Children bring chaos and clutter and an infinite potential for the future — Dan Simmons
Having sex or a domestic quarrel with the house monitors on is like undressing in front of a dog or cat ... it gives you pause the first time, and then you forget about it. — Dan Simmons
We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. What other creature in God's wide domain would carry the memory of you, Fanny, dust these nine hundred years, and allow it to eat away at him even as consumption does the same work with its effortless efficiency?
Words assail me. The thought of books makes me ache. Poetry echoes in my mind, and if I had the ability to banish it, I would do so at once. — Dan Simmons
Life doesn't retreat. — Dan Simmons
Mother's estate - our estate - a thousand acres centered in a million more. Lawns the size of small prairies with grass so perfect it beckoned a body to lie on it, to nap on its soft perfection. Noble shade trees making sundials of the Earth, their shadows circling in stately procession; now mingling, now contracting to midday, finally stretching eastward with the dying of the day. Royal oak. Giant elms. Cottonwood and cypress and redwood and bonsai. Banyan trees lowering new trunks like smooth-sided columns in a temple roofed by sky. Willows lining carefully laid canals and haphazard streams, their hanging branches singing ancient dirges to the wind. — Dan Simmons
I was thinking about how free of mobs recent centuries had been: to create a mob there must be public meetings, and public meetings in our time consisted of individuals communing via the All Thing or other datasphere channels; it is hard to create mob passion when people are separated by kilometers and light-years, connected only by comm lines and fatline threads. — Dan Simmons
Most of us, I hope, have had some child or spouse or friend like Beatrice, someone who by his very nature, his seemingly innate goodness and intelligence, makes us uncomfortably conscious of our lies when we lie. Sol — Dan Simmons
He is asking us if we can truly bear hearing the story. Losing our ignorance can be dangerous because our ignorance is a shield. — Dan Simmons
What had John Keats said about Negative Capability - holding two opposite ideas in one's mind at the same time without straining to reconcile them? — Dan Simmons
There is something about raising a child that helps to sharpen one's sense of what is real. — Dan Simmons
The firstdown team for this planet must have had a fixation on animals. Horse, Bear, Eagle. For three days we were creeping down the east coast of Equus over an irregular coastline called the Mane. We've spent the last day making the crossing of a short span of the Middle Sea to a large island called Cat Key. Today we are offloading passengers and freight at Felix, the "major city" of the island. — Dan Simmons
The world often seemed more like a template for fiction than something that should be indulged in for its own sake. — Dan Simmons
You have to live to really know things, my love — Dan Simmons
Those who ignore history's lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them ... they may be forced to die by them. — Dan Simmons