“Pain is an interesting and off-putting thing. Few if any things in life concentrate our attention so completely and terribly, and few things are more boring to listen to or read about.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“It has been my experience that immediately after certain traumatic separations—leaving one’s family to go to war, for instance, or upon the death of a family member, or after parting from one’s beloved with no assurances of reunion—there is a strange calmness, almost a sense of relief, as if the worst has happened and nothing else need be dreaded.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“The problem with being passionately in love ... is that it deprives you of too much sleep.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“The universe deepened at that moment, the music of the spheres grew from a mere chorus to a symphony as triumphant as Beethoven’s Ninth, and I knew that I would always be able to hear it when I wished or needed to, always be able to Use it to take the step I needed to see the one I loved, or, failing that, step to the place where I had been with the one I loved, or, failing that, find a place to love for its own beauty and richness.
The energy of quasars and exploding stellar nuclei filled me then. I was borne up on waves of energy more lovely and more lyrical even than the Ouster angels’ wings seen sliding along corridors of sunlight. The shell of deadly energy that was my prison and execution cell seemed laughable now, Schrödinger’s original joke, a child’s jump rope laid around me on the ground as restraining walls.
I stepped out of the Schrödinger cat box and out of Armaghast System.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“I explained my opinion of the ship’s logic. “That is a strange designation,” said the ship. “While I have certain organic elements incorporated into my substructure and decentralized DNA computing components, I am not—in the strictest sense of the term—a biological organism. I have no digestive system. No need for elimination, other than the occasional waste gas and passenger effluvium. Therefore, I have no anus in either real or figurative terms. Therefore, I hardly believe I could qualify to be called an …” “Shut up,” I said.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“evolution is not progress, that there is no ‘goal’ or direction to evolution. Evolution is change. Evolution ‘succeeds’ if that change best adapts some leaf or branch of its tree of life to conditions of the universe.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“Thus evolved some members of the Core—not altruists, but desperate survivalists who realized that the only way ultimately to win their never-ending zero-sum game was to stop the game. And to stop the game they needed to evolve into a species capable of empathy.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“[The Void Which Binds] actual but unaccessible presence in our universe is one of the prime causes for our species elaborating myth and religion, for our stubborn, blind belief in extrasensory powers, in telepathy and precognition, in demons and demigods and resurrection and reincarnation and ghosts and messiahs and so many other categories of almost-but-not-quite satisfying bullshit.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“I could not do this, I realized, if I were immortal. This degree of love of life and of one another is granted, I saw for once and for ever, not to immortals, but to those who live briefly and always under the shadow of death and loss.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“That’s what writers and artists and creators do, boy. Listen to the Void and try to hear dead folks’ thoughts. Feel their pain. The pain of living folks too. Finding a muse is just an artist or holy man’s way of getting a foot in the Void Which Binds’ front door. Aenea knew that. You should have too.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“At that moment I would have welcomed spider-rats nibbling on my toes about as much as the idea of chatting with a missionary priest.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“Children bring chaos and clutter and an infinite potential for the future”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“We’ve been stuck in one species since our Cro-Magnon ancestors helped to wipe out the smarter Neanderthals,” she said. “Now it’s our chance to diversify rapidly, and institutions like the Hegemony, the Pax, and the Core are stopping it.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“Aenea heard the music of the spheres. She resonated with the Void Which Binds, which resonates in turn to sentient life and thought, and then she used the almost illimitable energy of the Void to … to take the first step.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“To see and feel one’s beloved naked for the first time is one of life’s pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“Nothing had ever been so welcome by its absence.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“The Hegemony had known how to treat cancer, but most of the gene-tailoring knowledge and technology had been lost after the Fall.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“In an interstellar society where the Church ruled all but absolutely, news awaited not only independent confirmation but official permission to exist.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“beyond ideology and ambition, beyond thought and emotion, there was only pain. And salvation from it.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create,”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“But this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination’s struggles, far and nigh, All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence, and to show How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me, There is no depth to strike in”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“Aenea nodded. “It’s wonderful to preserve tradition, but a healthy organism evolves … culturally and physically.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“This is all too important.” Aenea smiled. “It’s all too important. That’s the damned problem, isn’t it?” She turned her face back to the stars.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“Le disgustaba morir, y no quería morir más de lo necesario.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“and my editor, Tom Dupree, for his patience, enthusiasm, and shared good taste for loving Mystery Science Theater 3000.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
Dan Simmons
Born place: in Peoria, Illinois, The United States
Born date April 4, 1948
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“It had been a good day, all things considered. I had managed rather well on my own. I opened Grandfather's Bible. This is what it would be like when I had my own shop, or when I traveled abroad. I would always read before sleeping. One day, I'd be so rich I would have a library full of novel to choose from. But I would always end the evening with a Bible passage.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Fever 1793
“—Cuéntate a ti misma eso, valkiria. —Se inclinó para capturar sus jadeos con sus labios—. Tanto como quieras.”
― Kresley Cole, quote from No Rest for the Wicked
“The rule apparently is – once a social revolution takes place there’s
no need to stoke the boiler. But I ask you: why, when this whole business started, should everybody suddenly start clumping up and down the marble staircase in dirty galoshes and felt boots? Why must we now keep our galoshes under lock and key? And put a soldier on guard over them to prevent them from being stolen? Why has the carpet been removed from the front staircase? Did Marx forbid people to keep their staircases carpeted? Did Karl Marx say anywhere
that the front door of No. 2 Kalabukhov House in Prechistenka Street must be boarded up so that people have to go round and come in by the back door? What good does it do anybody? Why can’t the proletarians leave their galoshes downstairs instead of dirtying the staircase?’
‘But the proletarians don’t have any galoshes, Philip Philipovich,’ stammered the doctor.” Chapter 3”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, quote from Heart of a Dog
“The line between confidence and arrogance is very fine, and the line between arrogance and stupidity even finer.”
― Michael Scott, quote from The Sorceress
“I know I have gained Christ and through His blessing I have gained the whole world too, but for what I have lost, for what we have all lost, there is no end to the reckoning. We lost everything.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from The Winter King
Eleanor & Park
Go Ask Alice
The Graveyard Book
Mansfield Park
Tuck Everlasting
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