{"author":"Dan Simmons","author_id":"Dan+Simmons","total_quotes":72,"quotes":[{"text":"Sol wanted to know how any ethical system – much less a religion so indomitable that it had survived every evil mankind could throw at it – could flow from a command from God for a man to slaughter his son. It did not matter to Sol that the command had been rescinded at the last moment. It did not matter that the command was a test of obedience. In fact, the idea that it was the obedience of Abraham which allowed him to become the father of all the tribes of Israel was precisely what drove Sol into fits of fury.","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["abraham","ethics","god","obedience"],"id":1402,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"},{"text":"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.","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["conversation","missionary","priest"],"id":17693,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"},{"text":"Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion.","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["prison","writing"],"id":30890,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"},{"text":"That’s what writers and artists and creators do, boy. Listen to the Void and try to hear dead folks’ thoughts. Feel their pain. The pain of living folks too. Finding a muse is just an artist or holy man’s way of getting a foot in the Void Which Binds’ front door. Aenea knew that. You should have too.","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["artists"],"id":38847,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"},{"text":"Life is brutal that way... The loss of irrecoverable moments amid trivia and distraction.","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["cantos-3","dan-simmons","endymion","hyperion","inspirational","sad","sad-but-true"],"id":43214,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"},{"text":"As Ummon 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.","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["evolution"],"id":45667,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"},{"text":"The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation.","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["mysticism","revelation"],"id":55657,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"},{"text":"When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["age","charles-dickens","death","life","old-age","regret","time","writers","writing"],"id":57526,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"},{"text":"... All good things beyond sleep come precisely because we defy gravity while we live.","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["defying-gravity","good-things","life","sleep"],"id":57699,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"},{"text":"In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.","author":"Dan Simmons","tags":["future"],"id":66847,"author_id":"Dan+Simmons"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":72,"pages":8,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}