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1e6e78d
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I wish we had the technology to fight God on an equal basis. 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.
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injustice
god
anti-theism
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Dan Simmons |
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90ce306
|
Do you think it's ready?" I [Silenus, The Poet] asked. "It's perfect... a masterpiece." "Do you think it'll sell?" I asked. "No fucking way."
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Dan Simmons |
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6e02c22
|
All this natural misery," Dr. Goodsir said suddenly. "Why do you men have to add to it? Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse? Can you answer me that, Mr. Hickey?"
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Dan Simmons |
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98093be
|
If I should die," said I to myself, "I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd."
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immortality
remeberance
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Dan Simmons |
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c256b23
|
Sol wanted to know how any ethical system - much less a religion so indomitable that it had survived every evil mankind could throw at it - could flow from a command from God for a man to slaughter his son. It did not matter to Sol that the command had been rescinded at the last moment. It did not matter that the command was a test of obedience. In fact, the idea that it was the obedience of Abraham which allowed him to become the father of..
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god
ethics
obedience
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Dan Simmons |
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8970ea8
|
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.
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men
reading
inner-world
melancholy
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Dan Simmons |
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32be266
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But as with so many things in our lives, the reason for doing something is not the important thing. It is the fact of doing that remains.
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Dan Simmons |
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8281c4d
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What, after all, is more real to us than the geography of our childhoods?
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reality
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Dan Simmons |
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9bc8fb1
|
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.
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Dan Simmons |
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7b3bd72
|
His imagination was always more real than the reality of daily life.
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reality
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Dan Simmons |
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bc92c5b
|
The Song of Kali is with us. It has been with us for a very long time. Its chorus grows and grows and grows. But there are other voices to be heard. There are other songs to be sung.
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Dan Simmons |
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0951adc
|
He loved the darkness and the mystery of the Catholic service--the tall priest strutting like a carrion crow and pronouncing magic in a dead language, the immediate magic of the Eucharist bringing the dead back to life so that the faithful could devour Him and become of Him, the smell of incense and the mystical chanting.
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magic
christianity
jesus
religion
language
mysticism
ritual
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Dan Simmons |
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1f3e358
|
The words sounded like a mournful incantation.
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words
magic
melancholy
language
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Dan Simmons |
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5591fe0
|
The past is dead and buried. But I know now that buried things have a way of rising to the surface when one least expects them to.
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past
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Dan Simmons |
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70f89d6
|
But, Dad..." She hesitated. "It will mean raising me all over again. It means suffering through my childhood for a third time. No parent should be asked to do that." Sol managed a smile. "No parent would refuse that, Rachel." --
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love
parenting
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Dan Simmons |
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cca0f14
|
Mark Twain once opined in his homey way: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."
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Dan Simmons |
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b61afc3
|
Sol Weintraub suddenly understood perfectly why Abraham had agreed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, when the Lord commanded him to do so. It was not obedience. It was not even to put the love of God above the love of his son. Abraham was testing God. By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife, God had earned the right--in Abraham's eyes and the hearts of his offspring--to become the God of Abraham. Sol
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Dan Simmons |
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f69f325
|
The life of a poet lies not merely in the finite language-dance of expression but in the nearly infinite combinations of perception and memory combined with the sensitivity to what is perceived and remembered.
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Dan Simmons |
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2531c62
|
The Chinese poet George Wu ... recorded on his comlog: "Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become." Later, on his last disk to his lover the week before he died, Wu said: "Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers."
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truth
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Dan Simmons |
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ab086d4
|
Pain is the curl and foam of a wave that does not break.
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Dan Simmons |
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ad0a342
|
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.
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Dan Simmons |
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121b523
|
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 suc..
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Dan Simmons |
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dd26298
|
And above it all the butterfly effect. The sure knowledge that the entire life of a human being is like a single day in that human's life: unplannable, unpredictable, governed by the hidden tides of chaotic factors and buffered by butterfly wings...
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Dan Simmons |
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ac552d0
|
God is the creature, not the creator.
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Dan Simmons |
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c949cbc
|
Religion and ethics were not always - or even frequently - mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often deflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice.
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religion
ethics
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Dan Simmons |
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7231e29
|
The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation.
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revelation
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Dan Simmons |
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d95e80f
|
The Ice Master was too injured and too exhausted to crawl any farther. Let whatever was going to happen to him happen now and may a Sailor's God fuck to Hell this fucking thing that was going to eat him.
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Dan Simmons |
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7bb4ee8
|
Meaning no disrespect, sir, but there's no way in the Good Lord's fucking universe that anyone can bar accidents or the unexpected.
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Dan Simmons |
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0f69336
|
Human art, Mahnmut knew, simply transcended human beings.
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Dan Simmons |
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b6e2798
|
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!"
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Dan Simmons |
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49d10ce
|
I discovered what a mental stimulant physical labor could be; not mere physical labor, I should add, but absolutely spine-bending, lung-racking, gut-ripping, ligament-tearing, and ball-breaking physical labor. But as long as the task is both onerous and repetitive, I discovered, the mind is not only free to wander to more imaginative climes, it actually flees to higher planes.
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Dan Simmons |
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7bfeedb
|
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?"
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cynicism-reality
joke-life
cynicism
|
Dan Simmons |
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3e6163e
|
THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER MISUSE OF THIS CHANNEL. YOU ARE DISTURBING OTHERS WHO ARE USING IT TO SERIOUS PURPOSE. ACCESS WILL BE RESTORED WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS FOR. GOODBYE
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Dan Simmons |
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a69e75c
|
Sol had not known he was lonely until he met Sarai.
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Dan Simmons |
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5040c1b
|
a comment with the idle arrogance common of such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power.
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Dan Simmons |
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702352f
|
It has been my experience that immediately after certain traumatic separations--leaving one's family to go to war, for instance, or upon the death of a family member, or after parting from one's beloved with no assurances of reunion--there is a strange calmness, almost a sense of relief, as if the worst has happened and nothing else need be dreaded.
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Dan Simmons |
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716bd7a
|
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.
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knowing
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Dan Simmons |
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6c57759
|
No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing.
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death
meaning-of-life
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Dan Simmons |
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f927496
|
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 ra..
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hatred
suffering
religion
searching
obedience
|
Dan Simmons |
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de068a6
|
We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit. We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone.
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Dan Simmons |
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d5d03bb
|
Choose again.
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Dan Simmons |
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c9006a7
|
People always pay a lot of money for things that make them stupid.
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Dan Simmons |
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29bd8ee
|
The problem with being passionately in love ... is that it deprives you of too much sleep.
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Dan Simmons |
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59f887d
|
He enjoyed the soft sound of night wind and the knowledge that he was the only boy -- perhaps the only human being -- out there in the dark on the windy, frozen-grass meadows on this night that smelled of coming snow, alienated from the lighted windows and the warm hearths, very aware that he was of the village but not part of it at that moment. It was a thrilling, almost erotic feeling -- an illicit discovery of self separated from everyon..
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Dan Simmons |