Dan Simmons quotes - page 3

Dan Simmons is an American author acclaimed for his works in science fiction, horror, and fantasy. His most famous novels include the "Hyperion Cantos" series and "The Terror." He has received numerous awards for his imaginative storytelling and influential contributions to genre literature. Here are 121 of his quotes:

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.

Dan Simmons

The future is never written...only penciled in.

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.

Dan Simmons

Sol found their tracts the usual combination of double talk and navel lint-gathering common to most religions.

Dan Simmons

What?” "Never mind. It will make sense when it comes about. All improbabilities do when probability waves collapse into event.

Dan Simmons

You are quite acute for a mental stillborn.

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.

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.”.

Dan Simmons

In the beginning was the Word. In the end...past honor, past life, past caring... In the end will be the Word.

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.

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.

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

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.

Dan Simmons

There is something about raising a child that helps to sharpen one's sense of what is real.

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.

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.

Dan Simmons

Sometimes,” said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, "dreams are all that separate us from the machines.

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.

Dan Simmons

If one is to observe, M. Endymion, one must be in the proper place to observe.

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.

Dan Simmons

How about,” she said, "that you do the logical thing because it's the logical thing to do?

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.

Dan Simmons