Most of us do know we have no immortality. And when you've found a genius, someone who has already purchased his immortality in musical or literary terms, it's maddening. Dan Simmons More Quotes by Dan Simmons More Quotes From Dan Simmons You treat violence as an aberration ... when in truth it is the norm. It is the very essence of the human condition. Dan Simmons aberration violence essence If our god's work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves. Dan Simmons our-time done ifs Any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being evil. Dan Simmons innocent deities evil Once evolution gets a good basic design, it tends to throw away the variants and concentrate on the near-infinite diversity within that design. Dan Simmons diversity design evolution Lovemaking seems all too absurd when described. Dan Simmons absurd seems 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 shadow book ideas Religion seems to have always offered us that false duality ... the silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty. Dan Simmons space silence comfort Stupidity has a price and it always gets paid. Dan Simmons paid stupidity 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 voice powerful names No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned. Dan Simmons finished abandoned book War must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and that peace is health. Dan Simmons pain war children The sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains. Dan Simmons crowds passion brain Context is to data what water is to a dolphin Dan Simmons dolphins data water I loved you backward and forward in time. I loved you beyond boundaries of time and space. Dan Simmons i-loved-you space boundaries Mystery. The strangeness of place so necessary to some creative spirits. A perfect mixture of the classical utopia and the pagan mystery. Dan Simmons mixtures creative perfect 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 skeletons powerful truth 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 weekend time memories Anticlimax is, of course, the warp and way of things. Real life seldom structures a decent denouement. Dan Simmons real life way Seduction... was both a science and art - a blend of skill, discipline, proximity, and opportunity. Mostly proximity. Dan Simmons skills opportunity art Losing our ignorance can be dangerous because our ignorance is a shield. Dan Simmons shields ignorance losing