Dan Simmons Quotes

There is no guarantee of happiness, wisdom, or long life if you drink of me this evening, she says, very softly. There is no nirvana. There is no salvation. There is no afterlife. There is no rebirth. There is only immense knowledge—of the heart as well as the mind—and the potential for great discoveries, great adventures, and and a guarantee of more of the pain and terror that make up so much of our short lives.

As is always the case when you are with the actual human being behind the celebrity or legend, there is something human about the man or woman that makes things less than myth.

If the universe has any soul, it is the soul of irony.

There is something about raising a child that helps to sharpen one’s sense of what is real.

Doing a life study while drunk and in the process of being seduced is never a formula for quality art.

There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always—always—returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred.
Not this time. Not ever again.

The human mind gets used to strangeness very quickly if it does not exhibit interesting behavior.

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

Human philosophy tends to shake down into values which might be categorizes as intellectual, religious, moral, and aesthetic.

It no longer matters who consider themselves the masters of events. Events no longer obey their masters.

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

I ached everywhere. It was hard to separate the dull agony of the shattered leg from the ache in my head and my back and my guts. My skull felt as if there were a ball of mercury in it that shifted ponderously long seconds after my head itself turned. The vertigo made me sick again, but I had nothing left to vomit. I hung on the tangle of branches and contemplated the glories of adventure.

I realized that for this moment, nothing in the past mattered. Nothing terrible in the future mattered. What mattered was her skin against me, her hand holding me, the perfume of her hair and skin and the warmth of her breath against my chest. This was satori. This was truth.

While I was obsessed with my own misery, there were other things occurring in the human universe.

Belief in one’s identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one’s immortality...and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.