... a comment with the idle arrogance common of such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power.

— Dan Simmons

... all good things beyond sleep come precisely because we defy gravity while we live.

— Dan Simmons

All of our lives are governed by a certain degree of faith in bullshit.

— Dan Simmons

All those before us have gone into the darkness without assurance of logic fact or persuasive theory, with only a slender thread of hope or the all too sharable conviction of faith. And if they have been able to sustain that slim hope in the face of darkness, then so must I.

— Dan Simmons

All those before us have gone into the darkness without assurance of logic or fact or persuasive theory, with only a slender thread of hope or all too sharable convention of faith. And they have been able to sustain that slim hope in the face of darkness, then so must I.

— Dan Simmons

Arena did not laugh again, but her smile slashed upward in a twist of green lips. “Martin, Martin, Martin,” she said, “the population of literate people has been declining steadily since Gutenberg’s day. By the twentieth century, less than two percent of the people in the so-called industrialized democracies read even one book a year. And that was before the smart machines, dataspheres, and user-friendly environments.

— Dan Simmons

As Summon and the other Masters teach, it explains why the giraffe evolved a long neck but never why the other animals did not. It explains why humankind evolved to intelligence, but not why the tree near the front gate refused to.

— Dan Simmons

At that moment I would have welcomed spider-rats nibbling on my toes about as much as the idea of chatting with a missionary priest.

— Dan Simmons

But, Dad…” She hesitated. “It will mean raising me all over again. It means suffering through my childhood for a third time. No parent should be asked to do that.” Sol managed a smile. “No parent would refuse that, Rachel.

— Dan Simmons

... Data itself... was tolerable. It was the constant nerve-web-expanding pain of context that would kill him.

— Dan Simmons