“Here’s the deal. Willi’s bought the rights to a paperback best-seller called The White Slaver. It’s a piece of formulized shit written for illiterate fourteen-year-olds and the kind of lobotomized housewife that lines up to buy the new Harlequin romances each month. Jack-off material for intellectual quadriplegics. Naturally”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Carrion Comfort
“Here’s the deal. Willi’s bought the rights to a paperback best-seller called The White Slaver. It’s a piece of formulized shit written for illiterate fourteen-year-olds and the kind of lobotomized housewife that lines up to buy the new Harlequin romances each month. Jack-off material for intellectual quadriplegics. Naturally it sold about three million copies. We”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Carrion Comfort
“a degree in psychiatry merely qualifies one to begin learning about the intricacies and foibles of the human personality.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Carrion Comfort
“Don’t you see, Anthony? For all the evangelicals’ talk about this nation being founded on religious principles…this being a Christian nation and all…most of the Founding Fathers were like Jefferson…atheists, pointy-headed intellectuals, Unitarians…”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Carrion Comfort
“He wished he were home in Charleston, listening to the Dave Brubeck Quartet on the stereo and reading Bruce Catton.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Carrion Comfort
“Natalie’s father had a saying for that behavior—Stupidity has a price and it always gets paid.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Carrion Comfort
“All of our lives are governed by a certain degree of faith in bullshit.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Carrion Comfort
Dan Simmons
Born place: in Peoria, Illinois, The United States
Born date April 4, 1948
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“Liz, I like you very much," he says.
"Oh," she says, "I like you very much, too!"
Owen is not sure if she means "O" for Owen, or just plan "Oh." He is not sure what difference it would make in either case. He feels the needs to clarify. "When I said 'I like you very much,' I actually meant 'I love you.'"
"O," she says, "I actually meant the same thing." She closes the car door behind her.
"Well," he says to himself, driving back to his apartment, "isn't that something?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Roscoe had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. He awoke to find persistent itching on his stomach. He scratched it through his T-shirt.
He went back to sleep. But dreams kept him from sleeping soundly. That and the itching.
He woke again and felt the itchy spot. There was a lump there. Like a swelling. And when he held still and pressed his fingers against the spot he could feel something moving under the skin.
The small room was suddenly very cold. Roscoe shivered.
He went to the window hoping for light. There was a moon but the light was faint. Roscoe pulled his shirt over his head. He looked down at the spot on his stomach.
It was moving. The flesh itself. He could feel it under his fingertips. Like something poking back at him. But he couldn’t feel it from the inside, couldn’t feel it in his stomach. And he realized that his entire body was numb. He could feel with his fingertips but not the skin of his stomach—
The skin split!
“Ahhhh!”
He was touching it as it split, and he shrieked in terror and something pushed its way out through a bloodless hole.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, no no no no!”
Roscoe screamed and leaped for the door. His hand clawed at the knob as he babbled and wept and the door was locked, locked, oh, God, no, they had locked him in.
He banged at the door, but it was the middle of the night. Who would hear him in the empty town hall?
“Hey! Hey! Is anyone there? Help me. Help me. Please, please, someone help me!”
He banged and the thing in his belly stuck out half an inch. He was scared to look at it. But he did and he screamed again because it was a mouth now, a gnashing insect mouth full of parts like no normal mouth. Hooked, wicked mandibles clicked. It was inside him, chewing its way out.
Hatching from him.
“Help me, help me, don’t leave me here like this!”
But who would hear him? Sinder? No. Not anymore. That was over. All over. And he was alone and friendless. No one even to hear as he screamed and begged.
The window. He grabbed the pillow from his bed and pushed it against the glass and then punched it hard. The pane shattered. He took off his shoe and smashed at the starred glass until most of it fell tinkling to the street below.
Then he screamed for help. Screamed into the Perdido Beach night air.
No answer.
“Help me! Please, please, oh, God, please help me! You can’t just leave me locked up!”
But still, no answer.
Fear took hold of him, deep crazy-making fear.
No. No. No no no no, this couldn’t be happening. He hadn’t done anything to hurt anyone, he hadn’t done anything awful. Why? Why was this happening to him?
Roscoe fell to his knees and begged God. God, please, no, no, no, I didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t brave or strong but I wasn’t bad, either. Not like this, please, God, no no no, not like this.
Roscoe felt an itching in the middle of his back.
He sat down and cried.”
― Michael Grant, quote from Plague
“At some time in the recent past someone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadn’t worked. It’s a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colors are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little-understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colors always smell slightly of boiled cabbage—even if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity. ”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Equal Rites
“As he slipped away he heard his own cradled heartbeat, muffled though it was in the tickling wool of exhaustion.”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“The most important thing in life is style. That is the style of one s existence the characteristic mode of one s actions is basically ultimately what matters. For if man defines himself by doing then style is doubly definitive because style describes the doing. The point is this happiness is a learned condition. And since it is learned and self generating it does not depend upon external circumstances for its perpetuation. This throws a very ironic light on content. And underscores the primacy of style. It is content or rather the consciousness of content that fills the void. But the mere presence of content is not enough. It is style that gives content the capacity to absorb us to move us it is style that makes us care.”
― Tom Robbins, quote from Another Roadside Attraction
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