Dan Simmons famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.
-- Dan Simmons

#Talking #Survival #May
There is no doubt that I have discovered the ultimate in stagnant human societies. The Bikura have realized the human dream of immortality and have paid for it with their humanity and their immortal souls.
-- Dan Simmons

#Dream #Soul #Humanity
The Great Change is when humankind accepts its role as part of the natural order of the universe instead of its role as a cancer
-- Dan Simmons

#Cancer #Order #Roles
The beauty of that June day was almost staggering. After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction. The breezes were so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin as to be embarrassing.
-- Dan Simmons

#Summer #Dream #Spring
In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.
-- Dan Simmons

#Decision #Made
Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become.
-- Dan Simmons

#Reality #Mad #Poet
We are all eaters of souls.
-- Dan Simmons

#Soul
Losing our ignorance can be dangerous because our ignorance is a shield.
-- Dan Simmons

#Ignorance #Shields #Losing
I despair at the rise of modern violence. I truly give in to despair at times, that deep, futureless pit of despair.... I watch the American slaughterhouse, the casual attacks on popes, presidents, and uncounted others, and I wonder if there are many more out there with the Ability or if butchery has simply become the modern way of life.
-- Dan Simmons

#Giving #Despair #President
Mystery. The strangeness of place so necessary to some creative spirits. A perfect mixture of the classical utopia and the pagan mystery.
-- Dan Simmons

#Perfect #Creative #Mixtures
Once upon a time ... the only autonomous intelligences we humans knew of were us humans. We thought then that if humankind ever devised another intelligence that it would be the result of a huge project ... a great mass of silicon and ancient transistors and chips and circuit boards ... a machine with lots of networking circuits, in other words, aping-if you will pardon the expression-the human brain in form and function. Of course, AIs did not evolve that way. They sort of slipped into existence when we humans were looking the other way.
-- Dan Simmons

#Expression #Once Upon A Time #Brain
The love of violence is an aspect of our humanity. Even the weak wish to be strong primarily so they can wield the whip.
-- Dan Simmons

#Being Strong #Humanity #Wish
Those who ignore history's lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them ... they may be forced to die by them.
-- Dan Simmons

#War #Lessons #May
Sometimes ... dreams are all that separate us from the machines.
-- Dan Simmons

#Dream #Machines #Sometimes
Poetry is only secondarily about words. Primarily, it is about truth. I dealt with the Ding an Sich, the substance behind the shadow, weaving powerful concepts, similes, and connections the way an engineer would raise a skyscraper with the whiskered-alloy skeleton being constructed long before the glass and plastic and chromaluminum appears.
-- Dan Simmons

#Truth #Powerful #Skeletons
History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.
-- Dan Simmons

#Dark #Historical #Different
Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.
-- Dan Simmons

#Bullets #Snipers #Poet
Anticlimax is, of course, the warp and way of things. Real life seldom structures a decent denouement.
-- Dan Simmons

#Life #Real #Way
If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow.
-- Dan Simmons

#Forever #Religion #Contact
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

#Time #Memories #Weekend
The problem with being passionately in love ... is that it deprives you of too much sleep.
-- Dan Simmons

#Love #Sleep #Too Much
Love is nothing but lust misspelled.
-- Dan Simmons

#Love #Love Is #Lust
This is every writer's nightmare--the sudden breakdown of meaning in the language that sustains and supports us...
-- Dan Simmons

#Support #Language #Nightmare
...speaking as a novelist myself, I know that members of our profession live in our imaginations as much or more as we inhabit what people call 'the real world'...
-- Dan Simmons

#Real #People #Imagination
Seduction... was both a science and art - a blend of skill, discipline, proximity, and opportunity. Mostly proximity.
-- Dan Simmons

#Art #Opportunity #Skills
I know what cancer was. How is it like humankind?" Sek Hardeen's perfectly modulated, softly accented tones showed a hint of agitation. "We have spread out through the galaxy like cancer cells through a living body, DurÃ©. We multiply without thought to the countless life forms that must die or be pushed aside so that we may breed and flourish. We eradicate competing forms of intelligent life.
-- Dan Simmons

#Cancer #Intelligent #Cells
... all good things beyond sleep come precisely because we defy gravity while we live.
-- Dan Simmons

#Sleep #Good Things #Gravity

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