Quotes from Dan Simmons

Is there another Life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering." Oh, Fanny, if only you knew! We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain.

Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity." "Empathy," Aenea said softly.

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

in the prohibited Cantos. That poem had talked about empathy being the key to human spiritual evolution. The Church had corrected that, pointing out that obeying God's Will was the source of revelation and salvation.

We are created precisely for this type of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides.

Toward more life," said Aenea. "Life likes life. It's pretty much that simple. But more amazingly, nonlife likes life as well Ã¢â'¬Â¦ and wants to get into it.

There is the sudden sound of pennants stirring on their staffs as the wind comes up.

kilometers of open sea and the equator. The next land we see then is the northwest coast of Aquila, the so-called Beak. Animals. To call this conveyance a "passenger dirigible" is an exercise in creative semantics.

I was familiar with the company of men: too familiar, I might have said then, for the elements I sensed in this room—bluster, braggadocio, and the sweat-scented ointment of city-nervous men in the throes of adventure-bound male bonding—had long since grown tiresome to me.

Despite our fatal addiction to the toys granted us by our own creations.

Brawne set her hand on the thing's broad chest and pushed. The

the population of literate people has been declining steadily since Gutenberg's day. By the twentieth century, less than two percent of the people in the so-called industrialized democracies read even one book a year.

Now he asked, his voice as careful and unslurred as only a true alcoholic's can be, whose turn it was to tell a tale.

he spied what appeared to be a crystal scarab rotating far above him, its insides ablaze with cool lights.

Call me Mort, Sol.

She does speak Bengali, doesn't she? Morrow had asked over the phone. Sure, I'd said. Actually, Amrita spoke Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and a little Punjabi as well as German, Russian, and English, but not Bengali.

The infant looked up at him and Sol felt the contact of her consciousness as surely as if she had spoken aloud.

The best lack all conviction," he thought, "while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

I did not forget that there was a panic button. The problem is simple—when there is real panic, one does not immediately think of buttons. The

I wasn't talking about the weather, said Abe. Although it's the hottest, most humid, most miserable goddamn hellhole I've ever been in. Worse than Burma in '43. Worse than Singapore in typhoon weather. Jesus, it's worse than Washington in August.

I've never been in a place that seemed as mean or shitty, and I've spent time in some of the great sewer cities of the world.

Anything which deceives is evil, I believe.

The only thing that had changed was that the bills were bigger.

said the bald little androgyny.