Top 400 Dan Simmons Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Now he asked, his voice as careful and unslurred as only a true alcoholic’s can be, whose turn it was to tell a tale.”

— Dan Simmons

352. “I did not truly know M. Masteen,” said the priest. “We were not of the same faith. But we were of the same profession; Voice of the Tree Masteen spent much of his life doing what he understood to be God’s work, pursuing God’s will in the writings of the Muir and the beauties of nature. His was the true faith – tested by difficulties, tempered by obedience, and, in the end, sealed by sacrifice.” Dur.”

— Dan Simmons

353. “And what was our DNA designed to do for the first few hundred million years, my son? Eat? Kill? Procreate? Were we any less ignoble in our beginnings than the pre-Hegira silicon and DNA-based AIs? As Teilhard would have it, it is consciousness which God has created to accelerate the universe’s self-awareness as a means to understanding His will.”

— Dan Simmons

354. “A Million years of Man’s Medicinal Progress will never reveal the secret Condition and sealed Compartments of the Human Soul.”

— Dan Simmons

355. “We all retreat into ourselves in some way.”

— Dan Simmons

356. “Suddenly a scream froze her in her tracks. It.”

— Dan Simmons

357. “From what Paul tells me,” said the Monsignor, “the Consul was true to his convictions, faithful to the memory of his grandmother Siri.”

— Dan Simmons

358. “Anyway,” I said, “the almost universal reaction to the poem – according to Grandam – was that it was weakened by this sentimentality.”

— Dan Simmons

359. “Being born again doesn’t mean that you’ve arrived somewhere,” said Dave. “It means you’re ready to start the trip. The pilgrimage to more places of power, the doomed quest to keep the people and things you love from being caught by the weeds and dragged under.”

— Dan Simmons

360. “I’m a childish fellow,” responded Silenus with his satyr’s smile. “Ambassador” – he nodded toward the Consul – “could I borrow that gilded pillow you’re wearing for a hat?” The.”

— Dan Simmons

361. “You’ll have to ask him in the next life,” said Sol tiredly. “He’s dead.”

— Dan Simmons

362. “He wasn’t interested in asking questions, only in finding answers.” “What’s the difference?” asked Baedecker. He felt the conversation slipping out of his control, dropping away from him like an aircraft that had reached stall speed. “The difference is that Scott took the line of least resistance,” said Maggie. “Like most people, he found it too uncomfortable to be out in the open, unsheltered by some shadow of authority. So when the questions got too hard, he settled for easy answers.”

— Dan Simmons

363. “It dealt with the Olympian struggle which followed the Titans’ refusal to be displaced – the boiling of great seas as Oceanus struggled with Neptune, his usurper, the extinction of suns as Hyperion struggled with Apollo for control of the light, and the trembling of the universe itself as Saturn struggled with Jupiter for control of the throne of the gods.”

— Dan Simmons

364. “Do you believe in God?” Sol had not smiled. He had no choice but to give her the answer he had given her a million times. “I’m waiting to,” he said.”

— Dan Simmons

365. “No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives.”

— Dan Simmons

366. “The steward had been more circumspect after that. He had learned – as Odysseus had learned after a certain number of years of his wanderings – that his guile was no match for the world and that hubris would always be punished by the gods.”

— Dan Simmons

367. “Every time I believe I know one of these men or officers, I find that I am wrong. A million years of Man’s Medicinal progress will never reveal the secret condition and sealed compartments of the Human soul.”

— Dan Simmons

368. “The Consul gripped the edges of the mat with fingers gone white. He had tied the strap of his duffel bag around his belt, otherwise the bag would have tumbled off to a glacier far below.”

— Dan Simmons

369. “It just makes me so goddamn mad,” she said, still looking away from Saul. “Yes.” “I mean, it’s like he didn’t even count. He wasn’t important. Do you know what I mean?”

— Dan Simmons

370. “Dale stepped over to the large console radio and wrestled it away from the wall. The inside was empty. No wires, no tubes, no lights for the dial, no works at all. Dale looked at the interiors of the other radios he’d listened to over the past two months. All empty.”

— Dan Simmons

371. “Crozier hurts to the cavity in the center of his self where he is sure his soul had resided until it floated away on a sea of whiskey over the decades.”

— Dan Simmons

372. “Richard,” said Dave, “do you ever wonder how much of your life you’ve spent trying to please the dead?”

— Dan Simmons

373. “Anything which deceives is evil, I believe.”

— Dan Simmons

374. “I was getting used to the caustic voice in my head. It and I had made a peace when I realized that it wasn’t urging me to lie down and die, just critiquing my inadequate efforts to stay alive.”

— Dan Simmons

375. “Outside the port, the slashed rock of the unnamed asteroid tumbled and spun in dynamics known only to the gods of chaos mathematics.”

— Dan Simmons

376. “We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt.”

— Dan Simmons

377. “The voice, sounding more than ever to Sol like some cut-rate holie director’s shallow idea of what God’s voice should sound like, came again: “Sol! You must listen well. The future of humankind depends upon your obedience in this matter. You must take your daughter, your daughter Rachel whom you love, and go to the world called Hyperion and offer her there as a burnt offering at one of the places of which I shall tell you.” And.”

— Dan Simmons

378. “Odd how many suffering members of humankind have faced eternity obsessed with their bowels, their bedsores, or the meagerness of their diets.”

— Dan Simmons

379. “Call me Mort, Sol.”

— Dan Simmons

380. “Strange,” said Natalie. “What?” “Two gunshot wounds, pneumonia, a concussion, three broken ribs, and enough cuts and bruises to keep a football team happy for a full season.” “Jews are hard to kill.”

— Dan Simmons

381. “He hated it when she had too much to drink and tried to hide it, acting the perfect lady – but Harlen could always tell by the precise diction, the slow movements, and the way she got all sloppy and tried to hug him.”

— Dan Simmons

382. “Brother turned the page and read aloud again without once glancing down at the text.”

— Dan Simmons

383. “The only thing that had changed was that the bills were bigger.”

— Dan Simmons

384. “The Church might have died before this revelation could have brought new life to it. But.”

— Dan Simmons

385. “Being eaten by a kraken less than a hundred kilometers from Conamara Chaos Central would be embarrassing.”

— Dan Simmons

386. “You might already be able to tell that I was born with a silver spoon up my ass. I offer no apologies.”

— Dan Simmons

387. “Theoretically, I knew, Sholokov’s design for the hawking mat allowed it to fly vertically, the incipient containment field keeping the passenger – theoretically, his beloved niece – from tumbling off backward.”

— Dan Simmons

388. “And then you’ll do what I say? “Yes.” “Take us where I’ll tell you to?” “Yes.” “No hidden overrides?” “None that I know of.”

— Dan Simmons

389. “Sarai gripped his hand. “Do you think you’re the only one who has had the dream?” “Dream?” managed Sol. She.”

— Dan Simmons

390. “I was always waiting for you, she sent.”

— Dan Simmons

391. “In an age where no information was inaccessible, no travel denied, such exclusion was maddening and tantalizing.”

— Dan Simmons

392. “For years I have carried on silent conversations with Siri, framing questions to myself for future discussion with her, and it suddenly strikes me with cold clarity that we will never again sit together and talk. An emptiness begins to grow inside me. Should.”

— Dan Simmons

393. “Is there another Life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering.”

— Dan Simmons

394. “If you are reading this, you are almost certainly reading it for the wrong reason. But as with so many things in our lives, the reason for doing something is not the important thing. It is the fact of doing that remains. Only the immutable facts that I have written this and you are reading it remain important in the end.”

— Dan Simmons

395. “All humans feed on violence, on the small exercises of power over another, but few have tasted – as we have – the ultimate power.”

— Dan Simmons

396. “Only humankind struggles and fails in becoming what it is. The reasons are many and complex, but all stem from the fact that we have evolved as one of the self-seeing organs of the evolving universe. Can the eye see itself?”

— Dan Simmons

397. “Despite the near-death of science. Despite our fatal addiction to the toys granted us by our own creations.”

— Dan Simmons

398. “To lose all this forever is the essence of being human, my love.”

— Dan Simmons

399. “You realize that everything you hear and see in this conference is highly classified?” I did not treat the statement as a question.”

— Dan Simmons

400. “People scream and run for coyer.”

— Dan Simmons