“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.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“To be a true poet is to become God.
I tried to explain this to my friends on Heaven's Gate. 'Piss, shit,' I said. 'Asshole motherfucker, goddamn shit goddamn. Cunt. Pee-pee cunt. Goddamn!'
They shook their heads and smiled, and walked away. Great poets are rarely understood in their own day.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“In twentieth-century Old Earth, a fast food chain took dead cow meat, fried it in grease, added carcinogens, wrapped it in petroleum-based foam, and sold nine hundred billion units. Human beings. Go figure.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel's childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things - the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossings and connections casual, dialogues imminently forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“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.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“You have to live to really know things, my love”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“I now understand the need for faith—pure, blind, fly-in-the-face-of-reason faith—as a small life preserver in the wild and endless sea of a universe ruled by unfeeling laws and totally indifferent to the small, reasoning beings that inhabit it.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“The day is perfect and I hate it for being so.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“A philosopher/mathematician named Bertrand Russell who lived and died in the same century as Gass once wrote: “Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.” Here is the essence of mankind’s creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatazoa attacking an ovum.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Who was Hitler?' I said.
Tyrena smiled slightly. 'An Old Earth politician who did some writing.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“It no longer matters who consider themselves the masters of events. Events no longer obey their masters.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Do you think it's ready?" I [Silenus, The Poet] asked.
"It's perfect... a masterpiece."
"Do you think it'll sell?" I asked.
"No fucking way.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“[H]istory viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Barbarians, we call them, while all the while we timidly cling to our Web like Visigoths crouching in the ruins of Rome's faded glory and proclaim ourselves civilized.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Nobody gets beyond a petroleum economy. Not while there's petroleum there.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“The life of a poet lies not merely in the finite language-dance of expression but in the nearly infinite combinations of perception and memory combined with the sensitivity to what is perceived and remembered.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“Stand as I did after throwing the switch, a murderer, a betrayer, but still proud, feet firmly planted on Hyperion’s shifting sand, head held high, fist raised against the sky, crying “A plague on both your houses!”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“... a comment with the idle arrogance common of such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“The Chinese poet George Wu ... recorded on his comlog: "Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become." Later, on his last disk to his lover the week before he died, Wu said: "Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it. If it's not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your business. You just know more about what is, what isn't, and how little time there is to learn the difference.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“The world as we know it is ending, my friends, no matter what happens to us”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
Dan Simmons
Born place: in Peoria, Illinois, The United States
Born date April 4, 1948
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“I wouldn’t go for a swim without consulting you first. But, given your past history working for Hollowcrest and skulking around dark places, I wonder if you have any insight into these tunnels.”
“Skulking?”
“Yes, is that not what assassins call it?”
“We call it working.”
― Lindsay Buroker, quote from Dark Currents
“Sometimes...you can cry until there's nothing wet in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray, all you want, to whatever god you think will listen. And, still it makes no difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you. And you know that if it ever did relent...it would not be because it cared.”
― Jhonen Vásquez, quote from Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut
“But no, music lasted longer than anything it inspired. After LPs, cassettes, and CDs, when matrimony was about to decay into its component elements—alimony and acrimony—the songs startled him and regained all their previous, pre-Rachel meanings, as if they had not only conjured her but then dismissed her, as if she had been entirely their illusion. He listened to the old songs again, years later on that same dark promenade, when every CD he had ever owned sat nestled in that greatest of all human inventions, the iPod, dialed up and yielding to his fingertip’s tap. The songs now offered him, in exchange for all he had lost, the sensation that there was something still to long for, still, something still approaching, and all that had gone before was merely prologue to an unimaginably profound love yet to seize him. If there was any difference now, it was only that his hunger for music had become more urgent, less a daily pleasure than a daily craving.”
― Arthur Phillips, quote from The Song Is You
“You learned a good lesson about fighting as a team. Remember that no warrior needs to be a hero. The most heroic actions take more than one cat.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Sign of the Moon
“Oh God, Harry, I just don’t know what to do.”
“Have you ever thought..?”
“What?” I ask hopefully.
Harry hesitates. “That maybe there’s nothing you can do?”
It is not the answer I’m expecting. I stare at him.
“I mean, maybe – maybe this is what it’s going to be like when he gets ill,” Harry continues doggedly. “He’ll have an episode – either of mania or depression – his meds will be tweaked, therapy will be stepped up, and everyone will wait for it to pass. Which, of course, it will do.”
“And so – you’re saying I should just weather the storm?”
Harry nods slowly. “I think so, yes. Otherwise you’re going to wear yourself down, trying to help him, trying to make things better, when it’s basically out of your control.”
I look at Harry. Somewhere, at the back of my mind, I think he might have a point. But I don’t want to admit it. Not yet.”
― Tabitha Suzuma, quote from A Voice in the Distance
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God-Shaped HoleBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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