Quotes from Dan Simmons

I came out mostly at night, moving through the ruins like a furtive shadow, sometimes gazing at my lighted palace tower like David Hume peering in his own windows and solemnly deciding that he wasn't home.

no book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.

androids do sleep

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

A mob is a brainless thing.

I have made command decisions based upon insights which would not have seemed totally logical outside the context of my experience and training.

There are real disadvantages to fighting in the nude when one's opponents are dressed, but the greatest problem is psychological. If you can get over the sense of heightened vulnerability, the rest is easy to compensate for.

supposition

Only the descent of the writer to the world was more painful as he or she returned, trailing clouds of glory which quickly dissipated in the mundane flow of sensory trivia.

a degree in psychiatry merely qualifies one to begin learning about the intricacies and foibles of the human personality.

Colonel Kassad stepped closer and laid long fingers on the poet's shoulder. For a few seconds the room seemed warmed by the mere fact of human contact.

It will make sense when it comes about. All improbabilities do when probability waves collapse into event.

dilettantes

But, in the end, it was none of these things, of course. It was only Hrothgar's claustrophobic mead hall with the monster waiting in the darkness without. We had our Grendel, to be sure. We even had our Hrothgar if one squints a bit at sad King Billy's poor slouched profile.

The beauty of being dead, he knows now, is that there is no pain and no sense of self.

I did not truly know M. Masteen," said the priest. "We were not of the same faith. But we were of the same profession; Voice of the Tree Masteen spent much of his life doing what he understood to be God's work, pursuing God's will in the writings of the Muir and the beauties of nature. His was the true faith—tested by difficulties, tempered by obedience, and, in the end, sealed by sacrifice." Dur

Red and blue shadows stretched across the amber lawn toward us. "Keats," I said.

How they must have thought their efforts and adventures over, only to have to pick up their burdens again. How often, I realized now as an adult in my standard thirties, how often that is the case in all of our lives.

The sculptor Pete Garcia is found in his studio Ã¢â'¬Â¦ and in his bedroom Ã¢â'¬Â¦ and in the yard beyond.

androids were free from original sin, therefore spiritually superior to humankind

But they were beautiful. When they died, rippling in rainbow colors, their many-hued messages unseen, unheard by their fleeing herdmates, the beauty of their death agony was beyond words. We sold their photoreceptive skins to Web corporations, their flesh to worlds like Heaven's Gate, and ground their bones to powder to sell as aphrodisiacs to the impotent and superstitious on a score of other colony worlds. On

The whiskey never seemed to compromise the man's competence

Sort of like the Grim Reaper, but with a penchant for sticking souls on a giant thorn tree Ã¢â'¬Â¦ while the people's souls are still in their bodies." King

Mis primeros poemas eran lamentables. Como la mayoría de los malos poetas, yo no me daba cuenta de ello, seguro en mi arrogancia de que el simple acto de crear daba cierto valor a los indignos abortos que alumbraba.