Quotes from Dan Simmons

life and work revolved around duty, self-respect, and the ultimate value of one's word.

How I yearn to throw myself into endless space, said Maggie, and float above the awful abyss.

How I yearn to throw myself into endless space, said Maggie, and float above the awful abyss. Both Baedecker and Gavin turned to stare at her. Goethe, she said as if in self-defense.

This is why we Hunt, woman. Look at yourself in the mirror! Do you want to die an old woman just because you're tired of using them? Acch!" Willi stood and turned his back on us.

las mujeres de Troya pueden ser más mortíferas que la mayoría de los hombres que ha conocido en su mundo de los siglos XX y XXI

I had forgotten that monsters do not die. They must be killed.

Ah, well, thought Charlie, ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to do and die.

One of my favorite things was from the Tattireeya Upanishads. It goes—'I am this world, and I eat this world. Who knows this, knows.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

dreams are all that separates us from the machines

Religion seems to have always offered us that false duality," she said, setting her cup of tea on a flat stone. "The silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.

driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heavens will; She can, though every face will scowl And every windy quarter howl Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

It suddenly occurred to Baedecker that small towns in America were saner than cities because they were allowed to sleep.

We all want to leave monuments

What do you think of the war, M. Severn? [...] What can one think of war? I said, tasting the wine again. It was quite good, though nothing in the Web could match my memories of French Bordeaux. War does not call for judgment, I said, merely survival.

He guards his privacy as zealously as a dragon guards his gold.

tornadoes writhing and dropping down like the Medusa locks they were named after

Silenus returns to himself in that process of allowing the world to rush in once more, much like the return of the senses following orgasm. 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.

you can judge a man by his choice of enemies as well as or better than by his choice of friends

If you are reading this, you are almost certainly reading it for the wrong reason. But as with so many things in our lives, the reason for doing something is not the important thing. It is the fact of doing that remains. Only the immutable facts that I have written this and you are reading it remain important in the end.

But who the hell cares if the flowers bloom if no one is around to see them, to smell them?

If love is the answer, what was the question?

he finally accepted the pull of the earth and saw clearly that it was more than the mindless call of matter to matter. And with that realization, Baedecker felt the same energy in himself, flowing through him and from him, bringing together and binding people as well as things.

Life is brutal that way... the loss of irrevocable moments amid trivia and distraction.