Quotes from Dan Simmons

In such seconds of decision entire futures are made

You've had your chance, Richard. Scott's a big boy now, and if he wants to spend a few years chanting mantras and giving away his lunch money to some bearded horse's ass with a Jehovah Complex, well, you've had your chance to help him, so what do you say you just get on with your screwed-up life, Richard E. Baedecker

Theoretically, I knew, Sholokov's design for the hawking mat allowed it to fly vertically, the incipient containment field keeping the passenger—theoretically, his beloved niece—from tumbling off backward.

Sono ancora convinto che vi siano luoghi troppo malvagi perché sia consentito loro di esistere. Di tanto in tanto, sogno nubi atomiche a forma di fungo che levano su una città, e figure umane che danzano sullo sfondo del rogo che un tempo era Calcutta.

Ogni forma di violenza è potere, signor Luczak.

Having sex or a domestic quarrel with the house monitors on is like undressing in front of a dog or cat Ã¢â'¬Â¦ it gives you pause the first time, and then you forget about it.

The Oberst chuckled. "The Führer was a cheap poseur," he said. "On April twenty-second…I remember it was two days after his birthday…the Führer decided to leave for the south to take command of Schoerner and Kesselring's army groups before Berlin fell. I persuaded him to stay. The next day I flew out of the city in a light plane, using as a runway an avenue that ran through the shattered Tiergarten. Move, Herr Barent.

LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE

Of course it's all a game. All of the good and hard and even bad things in life are just a game.

As was the case with so many young people I encountered these days, I could not tell if the boy was truly retarded or just pitifully ill educated. Most of the population under thirty appears to fall into one or the other category.

To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow.

Death, she decides early, is simple. One dies and makes the grass and flowers grow. Everything else is a crock of shit.

We have our non-organic memory to fall back on when our neural memories seem doubtful. Human beings have only that confusing mass of chemically driven neurological storage to rely on. They're all subjective and emotion-tinged. How can they trust any of their memories?

Odd how many suffering members of humankind have faced eternity obsessed with their bowels, their bedsores, or the meagerness of their diets.

I had long since learned that to read about the follies and scandals of the world was to desecrate the morning.

We lived in Boston, in an apartment where even the rats had to walk stoop-shouldered.

Finally, Weintraub had dealt with refusing all sacrifice, refusing any relationship with God except one of mutual respect and honest attempts at mutual understanding. He wrote about the multiple deaths of God and the need for a divine resurrection now that humankind had constructed its own gods and released them on the universe.

I immediately called Abe Bronstein to share the good news. Abe, who was as well known for never rising before ten-thirty in the morning as he was for his sense of good prose, congratulated me and gently pointed out that I had called at 5:45 A.M.

will. I swear I will.

Tell me everything you know about the horse, Bottom-san

She had changed into shorts and a T-shirt that read A WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE—AND THE SENATE.

Sometimes I think that remembering too much history is like alcohol or heroin—an addiction that seems to give meaning to your life but just wears you down and destroys you in the end.

Time sure kicks the shit out of people...

Marvelous melodrama," laughed Silenus. "A real-life, Christ-weeping Sargasso of Souls and we're for it. Who orchestrates this shitpot of a plot, anyway?