Dan Simmons Quotes
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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.
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If there is a true secret to the universe, it is this...these first few seconds of warmth and entry and complete acceptance by one’s beloved.
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Life is brutal that way...the loss of irrecoverable moments amid trivia and distraction.
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'And the sad fact is that all nanotech life out of our control-out of anyone’s control. The essence of nanotech life’s evolution is autonomy, self-will, and goals which have nothing to do with those of the harboring life form.''Humanity, you mean,' said Lourdusamy.'Precisely.'
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In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.
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Sol remembered the dream, remembered his daughter’s hug, and realized that in the end-when all else is dust-loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave.
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I thought-To lose all this forever?And I hallucinated Aenea’s voice saying To lose all this forever is the essence of being human, my love.
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Why am I seeking logic or sanity here? I'd asked myself at the moment. There hasn’t been any so far.
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Each of them was intimately aware of the procedure for electing a pope-not only of the antiquated mechanisms, of course, but of the politicking, pressuring, deal-making, bluffing, and outright blackmail that had often accompanied the process over the centuries.
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Yes, our DNA is unique but so is a salamander’s.
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I could not do this, I realized, if I were immortal. This degree of love of life and of one another is granted, I saw for once and for ever, not to immortals, but to those who live briefly and always under the shadow of death and loss.
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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.
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Never make unsupportable assumptions about your enemies, Martin. It can be a fatal self-indulgence.
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It's odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn't it?
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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.'
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Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become.'
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The future is never written...only penciled in.
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If the universe has any soul, it is the soul of irony.
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In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.
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If one is to observe, M. Endymion, one must be in the proper place to observe.
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We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, those limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain.
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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.
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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.
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I began to understand. 'A Faustian bargain...,' I said.'The Faustian bargain,' said the girl. 'All the church had to do to gain the universe was sell its soul.'