Dan Simmons Quotes (24 Quotes)

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

Even as he watched, a star moved above the limb of the planet, laser weapons winked their ruby morse

Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.

In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.

And then Kassad was being helped out of his simulation creche at the Olympus Command School and the other cadets and instructors were rising, talking, laughing with one another--all seemingly unaware that the world had changed forever.

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.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed.

Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.

But it's not just a game of finding literary references.

I really appreciated his theme of life evolving from one race of gods to another, with one power having to give way to another, as Hyperion must.

Finally, there's the simple fact that I would be bored silly if I read in only one genre or one type of author - so why write in only one form.

I have more respect for The Iliad now than I've ever had, and I've always thought it was possibly the finest piece of literature there was.

As for the depiction of the Catholic church, it's not meant to be a prediction.

It's one of the strangest attributes of this profession that when we writers get exhausted writing one thing, we relax by writing another.

As long as my sixth graders showed an average improvement of five years, the principal and district pretty much left me alone to create my own curriculum and teach whatever I wanted.

But I think, and hope, that the novels can be understood and enjoyed as science fiction, on their own terms.

It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri.

No one inspired me to write, but writer Harlan Ellison terrified me into getting published.

There's a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don't believe exists in any other art form; as a reader, I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort, however flawed.

The truth is, it's not a great career move to create a readership and then, in effect, abandon them.

You'll have no trouble finding it. You just can't miss it.

I loved almost everything about being a teacher, but I was an unusual teacher.

Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.

It's odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn't it?