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It no longer matters who consider themselves the masters of events. Events no longer obey their masters.
Dan Simmons -
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.
Dan Simmons
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'I am of no faith,' said Aenea. 'If one defines faith as belief in the supernatural.'
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 -
Dogma and hierarchy are endemic to such structures...indeed, such are the structures of any theocracy.
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.
Dan Simmons -
The Great Change is when humankind accepts its role as part of the natural order of the universe instead of its role as a cancer.
Dan Simmons -
'I wish we had the technology to fight God on an equal basis,' he said in low, tight tones. 'To beard him in his den. To fight back for all of the injustices heaped on humanity. To allow him to alter his smug arrogance or be blown to hell.'
Dan Simmons
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Crudely effective, but wildly inefficient.
Dan Simmons -
Belief in one’s identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one’s immortality...and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.
Dan Simmons -
It was a dramatization of total chaos, a functional definition of confusion, an unchoreographed dance of sad violence. It was war.
Dan Simmons -
'War does not call for judgment,' I said, 'merely survival.'
Dan Simmons -
If one is to observe, M. Endymion, one must be in the proper place to observe.
Dan Simmons -
I was not surprised to wake up alive. I suppose one is surprised only when one awakens dead.
Dan Simmons
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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.
Dan Simmons -
As is always the case when you are with the actual human being behind the celebrity or legend, there is something human about the man or woman that makes things less than myth.
Dan Simmons -
'Sometimes,' said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, 'dreams are all that separate us from the machines.'
Dan Simmons -
'I ignore religions,' said Brawne Lamia. 'I do not succumb to them.'
Dan Simmons -
I realized then what I had known since I was a child watching my mother die of cancer-namely, that beyond ideology and ambition, beyond thought and emotion, there was only pain. And salvation from it.'
Dan Simmons -
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.
Dan Simmons