|
aa7476c
|
In the end, it doesn't matter a damn bit. 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.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
da28466
|
ENOUGH!" bellows Zeus and not only stops Ares diatribe , but freezes every god and robot in place. "I'll hear no more whining prattle from you, Ares, you lying, two-faced, treacherous sparrowfart, you miserable excuse for a man, much less for a god."
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
e863b74
|
He is asking us if we can truly bear hearing the story. Losing our ignorance can be dangerous because our ignorance is a shield.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
75c6cea
|
The charge took less than forty seconds but Kassad discovered that this was ample time for his mouth to go absolutely dry, his breathing to begin to have problems, and for his testicles to retreat completely into his body. If the rest of Kassad could have found a comparable hiding place, he would have seriously considered crawling into it.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
893af19
|
I was thinking about how free of mobs recent centuries had been: to create a mob there must be public meetings, and public meetings in our time consisted of individuals communing via the All Thing or other datasphere channels; it is hard to create mob passion when people are separated by kilometers and light-years, connected only by comm lines and fatline threads.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
fbe5cb7
|
But Siri knew the slow pace of books and the cadences of theater under the stars. I knew only the stars.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
b4c8ba5
|
Crawford reacted in the fashion of small towns immemorial - some tongues wagged constantly, some people could not keep the pity and pleasure at someone else's misfortune out of their voices and gazes - but mostly the community folded its protective wings around the Weintraub family like an awkward mother bird shielding its young
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
8e70a6a
|
The universe just does not give a shit.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
5145c07
|
According to Bishop Edouard, the College of Cardinals has elected someone below the rank of monsignor for the first time in the history of the Church. This says that the new Pope is a Jesuit priest ... a certain Father Paul Dure." Dur"
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
517fab5
|
Poco despues del enorme exito de "La mujer de blanco", se me pregunto cual era el secreto de mi exito; yo, modestamente, le dije a mi interlocutor: 1. Busca una idea central. 2. Idea unos personajes. 3. Deja que los personajes desarrollen los incidentes. 4. Empieza la historia por el principio."
|
|
drood
|
Dan Simmons |
|
3597f99
|
Si un escritor se pone muy enfermo, todo se detiene. Si se muere, su "negocio" se acaba para siempre. En este sentido, la carrera de un escritor popular se parece mas a la de un famoso actor, pero hasta el actor mas famoso tiene un suplente. Un escritor no. Nadie puede sustituirle. Su voz personal lo es todo. Y esto es especialmente cierto en el caso de una escritor popular que ya esta en proceso de ser publicado por entregas en una revista..
|
|
drood
|
Dan Simmons |
|
81b98ff
|
No tengo que contarle que Martha siguio engordando durante cada embarazo y posteriormente. Despues de que naciera William, ella ya no fingio que pudiera despojarse del enorme peso que colgaba de su cuerpo como grandes masas de grasa. Parecia que habia abandonado el cuidado de su aspecto. Una vez escribi de Martha R. que era un bello especimen del tipo de chica que me gustaba: "La autentica chica carnosa inglesa, alimentada con carne de buey..
|
|
drood
|
Dan Simmons |
|
c553be4
|
Hell is also the memory of starving children in the slums of Armaghast and the smile of politicians sending boys off to die in colonial wars.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
a05965d
|
Love, that most banal of things, that most cliched of religious motivations, had more power--Sol now knew--than did strong nuclear force or weak nuclear force or electromagnetism or gravity. Love was these other forces, Sol realized. The Void Which Binds, the subquantum impossibility that carried information from photon to photon, was nothing more or less than love.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
db5af92
|
Love, that most banal of things, that most cliched of religious motivations, had more power--Sol now knew--than did strong nuclear force or weak nuclear force or electromagnetism or gravity. Love was these other forces, Sol realized. The Void Which Binds, the subquantum impossibility that carried information from photon to photon, was nothing more or less than love. But could love--simple, banal love--explain the so-called anthropic princip..
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
033e4a2
|
I hope that on the morning of my forty-ninth birthday, in Hemingway's last moments, he might have been thinking, if his sorrow and depression allowed him such a luxury as coherent thought, not only of his final, decisive, twelve-gauge gesture of ultimate defiance but also of any victories he had won in his long-running war against invisible enemies.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
1c354a6
|
They . . . are . . . so. . . sorry, " she whispered. "The machine brings back no . . . pictures . . . only the food and air and water. It is programmed . . . as you suggested, Dem Lia . . . to eliminate infestations. They are . . . so . . . so . . . sorry for the loss of Ouster life. They offer the suicide of . . . of their species . . . if it would atone for the destruction."
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
b93cf71
|
Wasn't 'Ms.' an honorific for females back in pre-rubicon days?" asked Frome. "Some sort of honorary degree for not getting married or something?"
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
0947a26
|
Dad," said Rachel, "I'm going to ask you a question I've asked about a million times since I was two. Do you believe in God?" Sol had not smiled. He had no choice but to give her the answer he had given her a million times. "I'm waiting to," he said."
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
78d2ca6
|
More climbers die during the descent than on the way up." Karakaredes seems to be considering this. After a minute he says, "Yes, but here on the summit, there must be some ritual . . ." "Hero photos," gasps Paul. "Gotta . . . have . . . hero photos." Our alien nods. "Did . . . anyone . . . bring an imaging device? A camera? I did not."
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
3043b3d
|
But love...of whom?" I say at last. "Of what? What great passion would forestall death?" Her graceful eyebrow arches, "You do not know? You, a poet?" I do not know. I say as much. She leans forward so that I can hear the rustle of her starched cotton blouse and silk beneath. Our faces are so close that I can feel the warmth from her skin. "Then you need more time to learn," she whispers, her voice as filled with emotion as when she cried ou..
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
9ec16fd
|
I love life, Eleanor. It is that simple. Had I the choice, I would live forever, accepting pain and loss as my due and learning--across time--even to appreciate the sharp seasoning of this sadness.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
1cc27d6
|
Sol! Take your daughter, your only daughter Rachel, whom you love, and go to the world called Hyperion and offer her there as a burnt offering at one of the places of which I shall tell you.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
6b895e0
|
a degree in psychiatry merely qualifies one to begin learning about the intricacies and foibles of the human personality.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
a2aa368
|
Martin Silenus sniffed a jar, found a knife on the sandwich plate, and added great dollops of horseradish to his sandwich. His eyes sparkled with tears as he ate.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
342ae9a
|
To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity. To be a true poet is to become God. I tried to explain this to my friends on Heaven's Gate. "Piss, shit," I said. "Asshole motherfucker, goddamn shit goddamn. Cunt. Pee-pee cunt. Goddamn!"
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
25edaf3
|
the lightning dance of gigantic hellwhip displays, beams the size of small worlds cutting their swath across light-hours and being contorted by the riptides of defensive singularities: the aurora shimmer of defense fields leaping and dying under the assault of terrible energies only to be reborn nanoseconds later.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
072d8d0
|
Trust me. I've seen it in London and I've seen it with shipwreck. Death by scurvy is worse. It would be better if the Thing took us all tonight. And with that we went below to the flame-flickering Darkness of the lower deck and to a cold almost the equal of the Dante-esque Ninth Circle Arctic Night without.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
eedb2cc
|
God is our refuge and strength, and ever-prethent help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountainth fall into the heart of the sea, though its waterth roar and foam and the mountains quake with their thurging.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
33e0228
|
Sol looked up as a dozen pinpoints of fierce light expanded into ripples and shock waves of plasma explosions far out in space. "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 |
|
2f898a9
|
The right hemisphere was not without some language--but only the most emotionally charged units of communication could lodge in that affective hemisphere; my vocabulary was now down to nine words. (This, I learned later, was exceptional, many victims of CVAs retain only two or three.) For the record, here is my entire vocabulary of manageable words: fuck, shit, piss, cunt, goddamn, motherfucker, asshole, peepee, and poopoo;
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
8b4f88e
|
AIDS II was a human plague disease back long before the Hegira," said Johnny. "It disabled the immune system. This ... virus ... works the same with an AI."
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
cfe013e
|
Dislinear plotting and noncontiguous prose have their adherents, not the least of which am I, but in the end, my friends, it is character which wins or loses immortality upon the vellum. Haven't you ever harbored the secret thought that somewhere Huck and Jim are--at this instant--poling their raft down some river just beyond our reach, so much more real are they than the shoe clerk who fitted us just a forgotten day ago?
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
9ec2330
|
Besides, history viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
371042b
|
Are we so sure that Christ always knew what to do next? He knew what had to be done. It is not always the same as knowing what to do.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
5a1f518
|
The critic had added a personal note: Most of us, I hope, have had some child or spouse or friend like Beatrice, someone who by his very nature, his seemingly innate goodness and intelligence, makes us uncomfortably conscious of our lies when we lie.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
6509741
|
We were gods then. But even gods must descend from their high thrones upon occasion.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
7d08bd5
|
Don't you see, Anthony? For all the evangelicals' talk about this nation being founded on religious principles...this being a Christian nation and all...most of the Founding Fathers were like Jefferson...atheists, pointy-headed intellectuals, Unitarians...
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
7743aff
|
What's it called?" she asked. "La putain enorme," said Ada. "What does it mean?" --
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
76a1def
|
The continuation of her life was more than another day of breathing, but was the gift of another day of engagement with her beloved across the spectrum of all things.
|
|
marriage
unity
spouse
|
Dan Simmons |
|
4120379
|
The fabric of space/time is much like one of the elaborate Vatican tapestries, thinks Nemes, and she who begins pulling on loose threads does so at the peril of watching the whole tapestry ravel.
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
3fb2877
|
Accidents are like death. Waiting for us everywhere. Inevitable. Unavoidable. Plan as we might, they defy our planning.
|
|
death
planning
|
Dan Simmons |
|
d4b5dc5
|
who, like Crozier, would rather have his kidney stones removed with a spoon than be forced to suffer sermons --
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |
|
a663b88
|
Their three approaches fail but somehow the story itself succeeds, despite its narrator's and even author's failures!
|
|
|
Dan Simmons |