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

Categorized in : People Writing Waiting

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

Dan Simmons

survival may talking

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

soul humanity dream

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 roles order

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

Love was as hardwired into the structure of the universe as gravity and matter.

Dan Simmons

structure matter love

Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become.

Dan Simmons

mad poet reality

We are all eaters of souls.

Dan Simmons

soul

In twentieth-century Old Earth, a fast food chain took dead cow meat, fried it in grease, added carcinogens, wrapped it in petroleum-based foam, and sold nine hundred billion units. Human beings. Go figure.

Dan Simmons

foam grease meat

A token of ecological awareness in a society devoted to self destruction and waste but unwilling to acknowledge its indulgent ways.

Dan Simmons

waste self way

The shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance.

Dan Simmons

routes absolutes ignorance

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

pain mistake sex

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

things-in-life pain interesting

In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.

Dan Simmons

seconds decision made

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

faith law sea

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

Dan Simmons

exhausted relax writing

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

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

Dan Simmons

science fiction thinking

There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain.

Dan Simmons

fullness pain knowing

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

immortality musical genius

The past is dead and buried. But I know now that buried things have a way of rising to the surface when one least expects them to.

Dan Simmons

rising way past