Quotes from Dan Simmons

In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain.

I'd already come to realize that the monologue was his favorite form of conversation.

Sounds like

M. Executive, I have explained the variables that require an alteration in our battle plan. Shall I begin this briefing again?

Stupidity has a price and it always gets paid.

In an age of superchargers, turbochargers, and every other prosthetic breathing aid, this was a normally aspirated V-6 that derived speed from perfection.

had been Mirandized. And a perfectly good adjective had been made into a verb.

there's still room for writing that holds out some hope for humanity.

I speculated, not for the first time, that the sanity of the nation would be much improved if children and adults were required by law to eat in separate public establishments.

Weltschmerz

I would have thought your Hegemony was far beyond a petroleum economy." I laughed and locked the wheel in. "Nobody gets beyond a petroleum economy. Not while there's petroleum there. We don't burn it, if that's what you mean. But it's still essential for the production of plastics, synthetics, food base, and keroids. Two hundred billion people use a lot of plastic." "And Maui-Covenant has oil?

that winter was colder'n a crib full of witch's tits

Great," said Natalie, "in evolutionary terms they're supermen. In psychological development, they're retarded. In moral terms, they're subhuman.

Sato said softly, "Bottom-san, please to understand, if you call me 'motherfucker' again, I shall be forced to kill you.

There was just a speck in the center of this T-shirt. But the speck grew larger—became a shirtless man walking toward the viewer—and pretty soon you could see the rapidly approaching man's face. Vladimir Putin.

It just makes me so goddamn mad," she said, still looking away from Saul. "Yes." "I mean, it's like he didn't even count. He wasn't important. Do you know what I mean?

began to wonder when this expedition had crossed the boundary from the merely fantastic into the region of the absurdly unbelievable.

Mark Twain once opined in his homey way: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." He was droll but incomplete. During those long months of beginning my Cantos on Heaven's Gate, I discovered that the difference between finding the right word as opposed to accepting the almost right word was the difference between being struck by lightning and merely watching a lightning display.

All of our lives are governed by a certain degree of faith in bullshit.

You had a corollary to Occam's Razor," persisted Syd. "I think it went—'All other things being equal, the simplest solution is usually stupidity.

He hated it when she had too much to drink and tried to hide it, acting the perfect lady—but Harlen could always tell by the precise diction, the slow movements, and the way she got all sloppy and tried to hug him.

Brother turned the page and read aloud again without once glancing down at the text.

Later, when the battles are won and the world is theirs, I will tell them about her. I will sing to them of Siri.

ameliorative. He climbed