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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 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 spouse unity | 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 | ||
| 01a1a0a | Admiral," said Gladstone, "is it absolutely necessary to destroy the singularity sphere as soon as the Ousters have penetrated our cordon sanitaire? Couldn't we wait another few minutes to judge their intentions?" "No, CEO," answered the Admiral promptly. "The farcaster link must be destroyed as soon as they are within quick assault range." | Dan Simmons | ||
| 4d6b881 | I love being a poet. It's the goddamned words I can't stand. | Dan Simmons | ||
| bb800a5 | even the Pyramids and other "great works" were as ephemeral as a castle of sand on the beach at Brighton." | Dan Simmons | ||
| 0d6ac5d | Anything is better than this penny-dreadful tale I've found myself in. | Dan Simmons | ||
| cccb549 | We will revel in hardships and welcome strangeness. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 5d8ac39 | 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-- | Dan Simmons | ||
| 198a922 | Gladstone had read Weintraub's book, The Abraham Dilemma, in which he analyzed the relationship between a God who demanded the sacrifice of a son and the human race who agreed to it. Weintraub had reasoned that the Old Testament Jehovah had not simply been testing Abraham, but had communicated in the only language of loyalty, obedience, sacrifice, and command that humankind could understand at that point in the relationship. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 9b8c699 | Later, dictating the tale into his comlog, the Consul remembered it as a seamless whole, minus the pauses, hoarse voice, false starts, and small redundancies which were the timeless failings of human speech | Dan Simmons | ||
| 2ada0ab | At that point Lord Agamemnon, Atreus' son, began shitting whole goats," laughs Orus, speaking loudly enough that several captains turn to frown at us." | Dan Simmons | ||
| 9a269e4 | A human being on this world, Duane realized with a shock of recognition approaching vertigo, made no more permanent impression than does a hand thrust in water. Remove the hand, and water rushes in to fill the void as if nothing had ever been there. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 604bf4a | and my editor, Tom Dupree, for his patience, enthusiasm, and shared good taste for loving Mystery Science Theater 3000. | Dan Simmons | ||
| d107356 | no nation was better at creating metaphors for itself than America; in this case, the vision of a beautiful, sane, safe, marble future that is all dream and no marble to sustain it. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 126f704 | Even if it all fails, it was worth the time," Saul Laski said softly. "The powerful have received their share of the world's attention even when their power has been shown as sheer evil. The victims remain the faceless masses. Numbers. Mass graves. These monsters have fertilized our century with the mass graves of their victims and it is time that the powerless had names and faces--and voices." -- | Dan Simmons | ||
| 113ada2 | Humanity had become as blase about sharing their lives with potential AI monitoring as pre-Civil War Old Earth USA-southern families had been about speaking in front of their human slaves. Nothing could be done about it--every human above the lowest Dregs' Hive poverty class had a comlog with biomonitor, many had implants, and each of these was tuned to the music of the datasphere, monitored by elements of the datasphere, dependent upon fun.. | Dan Simmons | ||
| d7b19ad | 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 | ||
| 56c1f3d | Words are the supreme objects. They are minded things. | Dan Simmons | ||
| 5b0727f | Marmon Hamlit on "AllNet Now!" issued the final deathblow: "Oh, the poetry thing from Whathisname--couldn't read it. Didn't try." Tyrena" | Dan Simmons |