Quotes by Dan Simmons - Page 3

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 / Author
Acid
Identity
Tests
Copy Quote
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 / Author
Expression
Lying
Memories
Copy Quote
It is a mystery, and to tell the truth, I am intrigued by mysteries even if this is to be my last week of enjoying them. I would welcome some glimmer of understanding but, failing that, working on the puzzle will suffice.
Dan Simmons / Author
Lasts
Understanding
Welcome
Copy Quote
Want to talk about Shakespeare's sonnets?" asked Orphu of Io. Are you shitting me?" The moravecs loved the ancient human colloquial phrases, the more scatological the better. Yes," said Orphu. "I am most definitely shitting you, my friend.
Dan Simmons / Author
Ios
Phrases
Want
Copy Quote
Pain and darkness have been our lot since the Fall of Man. But there must be some hope that we can rise to a higher level ... that consciousness can evolve to a plane more benevolent than its counterpoint of a universe hardwired to indifference.
Dan Simmons / Author
Men
Fall
Pain
Copy Quote
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 / Author
Faith
Law
Sea
Copy Quote
I'm very interested in the evolution of technology, and it's really the idea of artificial life which intrigues me, more than just intelligence - a new, evolving life form arising within our datasphere and coming into living relation with humanity.
Dan Simmons / Author
Technology
Evolution
Humanity
Copy Quote
Books ... were merely nodes in a near-infinite matrix of information that exists in four dimensions, evolving toward the idea of the concept of the approximation of the shadow of Truth vertically through time as well as longitudinally through knowledge.
Dan Simmons / Author
Book
Ideas
Shadow
Copy Quote
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 / Author
Mean
Reality
Thinking
Copy Quote
I think all the simple things can and do still work - holding your child's hand while walking across the street will do it. But we can hardly hear it for all the noise which has turned love into a cliche, and most people can't even hear John Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" anymore without wincing.
Dan Simmons / Author
People
Simple
Thinking
Copy Quote
Wilkie Collins was a rival and competitor of Dickens. His novel Moonstone sold more copies at the time than Dickens' last two books. But that meant nothing in the long run. Right now, to be honest, Wilkie Collins is what he deserved to be back then: a footnote, an almost lost memory. And he knew he would become that.
Dan Simmons / Author
Running
Book
Memories
Copy Quote
The powerful have received their share of the world's attention even when their power has been shown as sheer evil. The victim's remain the faceless masses. Numbers. Mass graves. These monsters have fertilized our century with the mass graves of their victims and it is time that the powerless had names and faces -- and voices.
Dan Simmons / Author
Names
Powerful
Voice
Copy Quote
The pack of media brayed and bellowed outside the house for seven weeks. Sol realized then what he had known and forgotten about very small communities: they were frequently annoying, always parochial, sometimes prying on a one-to-one level, but never had they subscribed to the vicious legacy of the so-called "public's right to know".
Dan Simmons / Author
Community
House
Media
Copy Quote
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 / Author
Despair
Giving
President
Copy Quote
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 / Author
Dream
Spring
Summer
Copy Quote
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 / Author
Truth
Powerful
Skeletons
Copy Quote
The never-ending competition between writers hasn't changed between 1868 and 2000. I used to belong to writers' workshops with other professionals, but that becomes impossible after a while. Everyone's on a different step of the career ladder. Jealousy doesn't have to erupt into murder and burying someone in Wells Cathedral, but it is always there.
Dan Simmons / Author
Competition
Different
Impossible
Copy Quote
The best advice that an accomplished writer could give a beginning writer is probably, "Find your slide and then grease it." Almost every writer that wants a rewarding career, in terms of money and status and number of readers, finally finds a certain genre or certain style that he or she sticks with until reaching a critical mass of readership. And I've violated this from the get-go.
Dan Simmons / Author
Advice
Giving
Grease
Copy Quote
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, Duré. 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 / Author
Cancer
Cells
Intelligent
Copy Quote
I think challenges are what any decent writer would be all about. If you actually do find your slide and grease it, shame on you. Me, I get bored very easily. As a writer I get bored even faster than I do in real life. I mean, I like fast cars; I've driven a lot of racecars. You need some stimulation. If I find something that seems too difficult to do, too difficult to research, or beyond your writing abilities, it's a perfect invitation to try it.
Dan Simmons / Author
Mean
Real
Writing
Copy Quote
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 spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos.
Dan Simmons / Author
Civilization
Essence
Ideas
Copy Quote
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 / Author
Time
Memories
Weekend
Copy Quote
There are many other writers whose work I admire tremendously, but none whose work struck me at just the right young age. Jack Vance taught me that speculative fiction, science fiction, could be wonderfully and liberatingly stylistic. It didn't have to be pulp stuff. He really changed my writing and my view of science fiction, so if nothing else, my little homage to him in the novelette I wrote for that anthology is my thank-you to him. He helped me see that any genre can have excellent writing in it.
Dan Simmons / Author
Age
Excellent
Writing
Copy Quote
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. 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 / Author
Mistake
Pain
Sex
Copy Quote
There were reprints of American editorials. Liberals saw it as a resurgence of social protest and decried the discrimination, poverty, and hunger that had provoked it. Conservative columnists acidly pointed out that hungry people don't steal stereo systems first and called for a crackdown in law enforcement. All of the reasoned editorials sounded hollow in light of the perverse randomness of the event. It was as if only a thin wall of electric lighting protected the great cities of the world from total barbarism.
Dan Simmons / Author
Law
Light
Wall
Copy Quote
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 / Author
Brain
Expression
Once Upon A Time
Copy Quote
You've probably heard about the theory of steam-engine time - that even after the steam engine had been invented, it had to wait until people were ready to make use of it. The same thing happens in literary circles. The truth is, I'm not terribly interested in Victorian times; I'm interested in Victorian writers. I'm interested in most eras of history, but not the Victorian Era especially. I was interested in the John Franklin Expedition. I was interested in these last five weird years of Dickens' life. And I just have to take the age that comes with all that when I write about it.
Dan Simmons / Author
People
Waiting
Writing
Copy Quote
When I get about five readers I can rub together in one genre, I leave that genre and go somewhere else. And this is due to a vow that I made myself when I started writing - that if I had any success at all, I would not be bound to one form of writing. That I would write what moves me. The only way I can see me surviving and doing more than one book is to present the readers with a Dan Simmons novel, with whatever tropes and protocols from whatever genre I want to borrow them. If that builds a Dan Simmons readership, well then, okay. Otherwise, forget about it. I'd rather drive a truck.
Dan Simmons / Author
Book
Moving
Writing
Copy Quote

Related Author Authors

Zig Ziglar
Author
Saturday, Nov 06, 1926
Wednesday, Nov 28, 2012
Wayne Dyer
Author
Friday, May 10, 1940
Saturday, Aug 29, 2015
Stephen Covey
Author
Monday, Oct 24, 1932
Monday, Jul 16, 2012
Peter Drucker
Author
Friday, Nov 19, 1909
Friday, Nov 11, 2005
Napoleon Hill
Author
Friday, Oct 26, 1883
Sunday, Nov 08, 1970
Maya Angelou
Author
Wednesday, Apr 04, 1928
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Les Brown
Author
Saturday, Feb 17, 1945
John Muir
Author
Saturday, Apr 21, 1838
Thursday, Dec 24, 1914
John C. Maxwell
Author
Thursday, Feb 20, 1947
Henry David Thoreau
Author
Saturday, Jul 12, 1817
Tuesday, May 06, 1862
Helen Keller
Author
Sunday, Jun 27, 1880
Saturday, Jun 01, 1968
Ernest Hemingway
Author
Friday, Jul 21, 1899
Sunday, Jul 02, 1961
Edgar Allan Poe
Author
Thursday, Jan 19, 1809
Sunday, Oct 07, 1849
Deepak Chopra
Author
Wednesday, Oct 22, 1947
Zz Packer
Author
Friday, Jan 12, 1973

View All Author Quotes

Top Authors

Peter Drucker
Author
Friday, Nov 19, 1909
Friday, Nov 11, 2005
Edgar Allan Poe
Author
Thursday, Jan 19, 1809
Sunday, Oct 07, 1849
Isaac Newton
Physicist
Sunday, Jan 04, 1643
Monday, Mar 31, 1727
Carl Jung
Psychiatrist
Monday, Jul 26, 1875
Tuesday, Jun 06, 1961
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Philosopher
Saint Augustine
Saint
Saturday, Nov 13, 0354
Wednesday, Aug 28, 0430
Maya Angelou
Author
Wednesday, Apr 04, 1928
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Khalil Gibran
Poet
Saturday, Jan 06, 1883
Friday, Apr 10, 1931
Kobe Bryant
Basketball Player
Wednesday, Aug 23, 1978
Dwight D. Eisenhower
34Th U.s. President
Tuesday, Oct 14, 1890
Friday, Mar 28, 1969
Thomas Jefferson
3Rd US President
Saturday, Apr 13, 1743
Tuesday, Jul 04, 1826
Paulo Coelho
Lyricist
Sunday, Aug 24, 1947
Stephen Covey
Author
Monday, Oct 24, 1932
Monday, Jul 16, 2012
Aristotle
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Rodney Dangerfield
Comedian
Tuesday, Nov 22, 1921
Tuesday, Oct 05, 2004

View All Authors

Dan Simmons Quotes - Page 3

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Author Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Author Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page