Quotes from Dan Simmons

Meanwhile, Kassad and Moneta and the Shrike could kill all of them without the Ousters realizing that they were under attack. It was not fair, Kassad realized. It was wrong. It was the ultimate violation of the New Bushido, worse in its way than the wanton murder of civilians. The essence of honor lay in the moment of combat between equals.

Henry James hated epilogues and refused to use them in his fiction. He said that life granted us no "epilogues", so why should art or literature?

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?

There is no doubt that I have discovered the ultimate in stagnant human societies. The Bikura have realized the human dream of immortality and have paid for it with their humanity and their immortal souls.

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." And

In the end, thought Sol, past logic and hope, it is dreams and the love of those dearest to us that form Abraham's answer to God.

Clemens laughed until he began coughing again. "Don't you see, James?" he said at last. "You and I are only minor characters in this story about the Great Detective. Our little lives and endings mean nothing to the God-Writer, whoever the sonofabitch might be.

Planck time and Planck length," I said. "I don't remember exactly—something about combining the three fundamental constants of physics—gravity, Planck's constant, and the speed of light. I remember it gave some tiny little units of length and time.

Niemand hat je gesagt, dass das Universum normal ist.

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.

During this time I quit attending classes at the university, and my grades rose from four Fs to three Bs and an A.

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. Thus

The voice, sounding more than ever to Sol like some cut-rate holie director's shallow idea of what God's voice should sound like, came again: "Sol! You must listen well. The future of humankind depends upon your obedience in this matter. You must take your daughter, your 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." And

Mountaineers know that all mountains are in a constant state of collapse—their verticality being inescapably and inevitably worn down every moment by wind, water, weather, and gravity—but

And then you'll do what I say? "Yes." "Take us where I'll tell you to?" "Yes." "No hidden overrides?" "None that I know of.

When I glanced back up, a holoed globe of Hyperion ceased spinning and unwound itself into a series of flattened projections: oblique equirectangular, Bonne, orthographic, rosette, Van der Grinten, Gores, interrupted Goode homolosine, gnomonic, sinusoidal, azimuthal equidistant, polyconic, hypercorrected Kuwatsi, computer-eschered, Briesemeister, Buckminster, Miller cylindrical, multicoligraphed, and satplot standard, before resolving into a standard Robinson-Baird map of Hyperion.

Il genoma umano, l'anima umana, diffida dell'omogeneità, Raul. È sempre pronto a cogliere al volo l'occasione, a correre il rischio del cambiamento e della diversità.

Romantico nel significato peggiore del termine, cioè contrassegnato da ideali melensi o insipidi che soltanto un'adolescente, o una società adolescente, potevano coltivare.

The surge became a roaring, shouting, screaming mass of rioters; at that moment, the sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.

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.

any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principle which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil. —

Can we stop them? Kassad was panting, pouring sweat, and literally quivering from excitement. —

realized that in the end – when all else is dust – loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave. Faith – true faith – was trusting in that love.

when I find the bullet iwill spit it out it out.