Dan Simmons quotes - page 3

What was the Depression?” "Bad economic times in their pure capitalist nation-state,” Aenea said. "Remember, the economy wasn't really global then, and it depended upon private money institutions called banks, gold reserves, and the value of physical money-actual coins and pieces of paper that were supposed to be worth something. It was all a consensual hallucination, of course, and in the 1930s, the hallucination turned nightmare. (Dan Simmons)
The place was part museum, part library, and part archive; I loved it at first sight...and smell, for here there were thousands of printed books, many very old indeed, and nothing smells quite as wonderful as old books. View quote
Dan Simmons
The future is never written...only penciled in. View quote
Dan Simmons
I learned that poets aren't God, but if there is a God...or anything approaching a God...he's a poet. And a failed one at that. View quote
Dan Simmons
Sol found their tracts the usual combination of double talk and navel lint-gathering common to most religions. View quote
Dan Simmons
What?” "Never mind. It will make sense when it comes about. All improbabilities do when probability waves collapse into event. View quote
Dan Simmons
You are quite acute for a mental stillborn. View quote
Dan Simmons
The lieutenant took his time scanning their visa chips, letting them wait in the drizzle, occasionally making a comment with the idle arrogance common to such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power. View quote
Dan Simmons
Sol realized what he had known and forgotten about very small communities: they were frequently annoying, always parochial, sometimes prying on a one-to-one level, but never had they subscribed to the vicious legacy of the so-called "public's right to know.”. View quote
Dan Simmons
In the beginning was the Word. In the end...past honor, past life, past caring... In the end will be the Word. View quote
Dan Simmons
He knew what had to be done. It is not always the same as knowing what to do. (Dan Simmons)
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. View quote
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 the 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 crossing and connections casual, dialogues imminently (sic) forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal. View quote
Dan Simmons
I realized that night the import and the terrible difficulty in the task ahead of me-in keeping this child safe from the sharp edges of a strange and indifferent universe. I think that is was on this alien and storm-tossed night that I first understood what it might be like to be a parent. View quote
Dan Simmons
Twenty kilometers. At an average speed of 120 klicks per hour, we should cover the distance in ten minutes. Ten freezing, adrenaline-pumping, gorge-rising, terror-beating-against-the-ribs, react-in-a-microsecond-or-die seconds. View quote
Dan Simmons
There is something about raising a child that helps to sharpen one's sense of what is real. View quote
Dan Simmons
Another friend, a child psychologist from the college, once commented that Rachel at age five showed the most reliable indicators of true giftedness in a young person: structured curiosity, empathy for others, compassion, and a fierce sense of fair play. View quote
Dan Simmons
Christ may have lost his faith for a few seconds; He did not sell it in the marketplace for the trinkets of ego and curiosity. View quote
Dan Simmons
Sometimes,” said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, "dreams are all that separate us from the machines. View quote
Dan Simmons
These were not religious fanatics, I saw, not mindless servants or self-punishing ascetics, but were, instead, row upon row of intelligent, questioning, alert young men and women. View quote
Dan Simmons
We know for a fact that the Buddha refused to speculate with his disciples on whether there was such a thing such as life after death. ‘Such questions,' he said, ‘are not relevant to the practice of the Path and cannot be answered while bound by the restraints of human existence.' Most of Buddhism, you see, gentlemen, can be explored, appreciated, and utilized as a tool toward enlightenment without descending into the supernatural. (Dan Simmons)
If one is to observe, M. Endymion, one must be in the proper place to observe. View quote
Dan Simmons
I ached everywhere. It was hard to separate the dull agony of the shattered leg from the ache in my head and my back and my guts. My skull felt as if there were a ball of mercury in it that shifted ponderously long seconds after my head itself turned. The vertigo made me sick again, but I had nothing left to vomit. I hung on the tangle of branches and contemplated the glories of adventure. View quote
Dan Simmons
How about,” she said, "that you do the logical thing because it's the logical thing to do? View quote
Dan Simmons
The Void Which Binds is touched by all of us who have wept with happiness, bidden a lover good-bye, been exalted with orgasm, stood over the grave of a loved one, or watched our baby open his or her eyes for the first time.” Aenea is looking at me as she speaks, and I feel the gooseflesh rise along my arms. "The Void Which Binds is always under and above the surface of our thoughts and senses,” she continues, invisible but as present as the breathing of our beloved next to us in the night. Its actual but unaccessible presence in our universe is one of the prime causes for our species elaborating myth and religion, for our stubborn, blind belief in extrasensory powers, in telepathy and precognition, in demons and demigods and resurrection and reincarnation and ghosts and messiahs and so many other categories of almost-but-not-quite satisfying bullshit. View quote
Dan Simmons