Simmons Quotes

How about this?' Simmon asked me. "Which is worse, stealing a pie or killing Ambrose?" I gave it a moment's hard thought. "A meat pie, or a fruit pie?

When kindness comes at the expense of truth, it is not a kindness worth having.

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

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

Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

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.

He put a hand on his throat, as though trying to stop the words, but they came anyway. "You're home. To me.

Walk amongst the natives by day, but in your heart be Superman.

Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.

To be a true poet is to become God. I tried to explain this to my friends on Heaven's Gate. 'Piss, shit,' I said. 'Asshole motherfucker, goddamn shit goddamn. Cunt. Pee-pee cunt. Goddamn!' They shook their heads and smiled, and walked away. Great poets are rarely understood in their own day.

In the end--when all else is dust--loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave. Faith--true faith--was trusting in that love.

Ember, you're the only piece of me I have left. Everything else-my family, my home, my soul- they're all gone. I don't know who the hell I am anymore. If it weren't for you... I don't know.

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

The shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance.

In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.

After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.

There is no gesture more devastating than the back turning away.

Wilem tapped Simmon's shoulder."He's telling the truth." Simmon glanced over at him."Why would you say that?" "He sounds more sincere then that when he lies.

I am Plato's Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

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.

He was my anchor in the hurricane, yet at the same time, the hurricane itself, so that I nearly always felt safe and afraid simultaneously. There was nothing in the world as confusing and powerful as being close to him.

Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur Long-lost in ledger all hope forgotten. Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding Breathless her breast her high blood rising To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty. “That sort of thing,” Simmon said absently, his eyes still scanning the pages in front of him. I saw Fela turn her head to look at Simmon, almost as if she were surprised to see him sitting there. No, it was almost as if up until that point, he’d just been occupying space around her, like a piece of furniture. But this time when she looked at him, she took all of him in. His sandy hair, the line of his jaw, the span of his shoulders beneath his shirt. This time when she looked, she actually saw him. Let me say this. It was worth the whole awful, irritating time spent searching the Archives just to watch that moment happen. It was worth blood and the fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn’t notice it herself. It wasn’t dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with a crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and the spark fades almost too fast for you to see. But still, you know it’s there, down where you can’t see, kindling.

I loved you backward and forward in time. I loved you beyond boundaries of time and space.

Mobs have passions, not brains.

I could not fall back in love with Chase Jennings. Doing so was like falling in love with a thunderstorm. Exciting and powerful, yes. Even beautiful. But violently tempered, unpredictable, and ultimately short-lived.

Luckily, even as a young man not yet become himself, John Bridgens had two things besides indecision that kept him from self-destruction - books and a sense of irony.

Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion

But you'll never have your happy ending unless you're brave enough to open the book and start your story.

Its hard to die. Harder to live

Don't do that again! Not ever again!" I told him. "I should say the same to you," he said. I could feel his breath, warm on my neck. "Promise me!" I demanded. "I... I promise." "I can't lose you.

As much as his heart remained rooted here, what lay beyond his country, beyond his nation, called to him like a cord buried deep within, pulling taut, drawing him away.

We are all eaters of souls.

Friends come into our lives and friends leave our lives. But friends never leave our hearts. And best friends always get to stay in the best places in our hearts.

There were plenty of ways to hurt someone without using your fists.

No matter where you're from or what you've done, you're never stuck in a particular circumstance, relationship, or cycle unless you say you are.

It was you," I say softly. "It's always you I think about." The intensity in his gaze took my breath away. I could feel him. Every part of him. His soul was sewn to mine. His heated blood flowed through my veins. I'd thought that I had been close to my mother, and I was, but not like this. Chase and I barely touched- our hands, mouths, knees- but there was no part of me that was not his.

You married me while I was sleeping?" I asked in amazement. They sky was beginning to bruise with the purple haze, and in it, I could see Chase's face glow a little deeper copper. "You hit me for kissing you. It seemed in my best interest to marry you while you were passed out.

No hard feelings about that time in the Crucible when you mixed my salts and I was nearly blind for a day. No. No, really, drink up!

Simmon pushed his hair out of his eyes, laughing boyishly. "You can't argue your way out of this one! She's obviously stupid for you. And you're just plain stupid, so it's a great match.

It no longer matters who consider themselves the masters of events. Events no longer obey their masters.

If you don't agree with me, I have two words for you: shut the fuck up.

I'm not fine," he said. "Not without you.

I promise I'll come back. No matter what happens." Though his voice was only a whisper, there was a fierceness behind it. I believed him completely. "I'll wait for you," I told him.

Barbarians, we call them, while all the while we timidly cling to our Web like Visigoths crouching in the ruins of Rome's faded glory and proclaim ourselves civilized.

I know what cancer was. How is it like humankind?" Sek Hardeen's perfectly modulated, softly accented tones showed a hint of agitation. "We have spread out through the galaxy like cancer cells through a living body, Duré. We multiply without thought to the countless life forms that must die or be pushed aside so that we may breed and flourish. We eradicate competing forms of intelligent life.

I think you look good, wearing my future.

Believe me, the library is the temple of God. Education is the most sacred religion of all.

You have to live to really know things, my love

Who was Hitler?' I said. Tyrena smiled slightly. 'An Old Earth politician who did some writing.

Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.

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.

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.

I jerked instinctively. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't die in this closet. "No one is going to touch you," Chase murmured into my hair.

I remember who you are. Even if you forget.

He was shy in her presence the next morning, his brittle spirit quenched enough not to shatter. The children did not see the ghost she saw, only his longed-for presence.

We are strong and proud and beautiful and there are not enough stars in the night sky to measure our worth. I will honor my mother and take care of my family. Yes, I think. I am just a woman.

The day is perfect and I hate it for being so.

I love you, Em. I've loved you since I was eight years old, and I'll love you my whole life.

Still, his scars, combined with the serpentine wound now visible without the bandage covering his shoulder, made him all the more dangerous. He was, to me, terrifyingly beautiful.

All this natural misery,” Dr. Goodsir said suddenly. “Why do you men have to add to it? Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse? Can you answer me that, Mr. Hickey?

Are you saying these Christians believe we will never be good enough to marry their daughters because of our race?

I led you here, only to bring you into something I would have spared you. Could I have known we would have what we dreamed of, only to watch it taken away?

Nobody gets beyond a petroleum economy. Not while there's petroleum there.

Mark Twain once opined in his homey way: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

The fact that Gene Simmon's son is a manga-ka disturbs me more than whether he's really copying or not.

Science isn't about WHY, it's about WHY NOT!

[H]istory viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.

The world needs people like you,' Simmon said in the tone of voice that let me know he was turning philosophical. 'You get things done. Not always the best way, or the most sensible way, but it gets done nonetheless. You’re a rare creature.

Wait until you meet the therapist. That bad? Let's just say i can't believe he's a real person. Like Santa Claus? More like if Santa Claus and Ron Jeremy had a child and then that child had a child with Richard Simmons. So, like a leprechaun? Yes, Otter, exactly like a leprechaun. I'm going to tell him I believe in Santa Claus, just to see what happens. I dare you.

Old beggars in stories are never really old beggars," Simmon said with a hint of accusation in his voice. "They're always a witch or a prince or an angel or something." "In real life old beggars are almost always old beggars," I pointed out.

If only their life could continue as it was it would be enough. It had always been enough for her, but never enough to keep him from righting wrongs of far wider consequences.

Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.

Want to talk about Shakespeare's sonnets?" asked Orphu of Io. Are you shitting me?" The moravecs loved the ancient human colloquial phrases, the more scatological the better. Yes," said Orphu. "I am most definitely shitting you, my friend.

I wondered what he'd done that had been so terrible that he wouldn't accept even an ounce of kindness from another person. It seemed impossible just then that I could ever hate him more than he hated himself.

He was her fire, had always been from the start, his burning, radiant spirit, a beacon worthy of following.

This is every writer's nightmare--the sudden breakdown of meaning in the language that sustains and supports us...

God is the creature, not the creator.

Men want success and sex. Women want everything.

Human art, Mahnmut knew, simply transcended human beings.

The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation.

He tilted his head, eyes peering deep inside of me in a way that made me feel exposed, like I'd never really been seen before, yet at the same time safe, like he'd never tell a soul what he'd found.

I wish we had the technology to fight God on an equal basis. To beard him in his den. To fight back for all of the injustices heaped on humanity. To allow him to alter his smug arrogance or be blown to hell.

It is true we enjoy self-government, but we live in fear. We find ourselves in the paw of a lion. Convenience may induce him to crush us, and with a faint struggle, we may cease to be.

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

Context is to data what water is to a dolphin

Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws.

Any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being evil.

I got almost eighteen years with you. The best eighteen years of my life.

If I should die," said I to myself, "I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd.

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.

... a society devoted to self-destruction and waste but unwilling to acknowledge its indulgent ways.

A person's strength is to know their weaknesses.

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.

Do you think it's ready?" I [Silenus, The Poet] asked. "It's perfect... a masterpiece." "Do you think it'll sell?" I asked. "No fucking way.

Chase Jennings, I love you. I love the boy you were and the man that you've become and even when I don't like you at all I still love you because you are you, kind safe and good, because you understand me and are not afraid.

Yes, he is a fluent and forward young man, with a great deal of Indian Pride. If only his heart were subdued by Divine grace, he might be exceedingly useful to his people.

What, after all, is more real to us than the geography of our childhoods?

...speaking as a novelist myself, I know that members of our profession live in our imaginations as much or more as we inhabit what people call 'the real world'...

Pain and darkness have been our lot since the Fall of Man. But there must be some hope that we can rise to a higher level ... that consciousness can evolve to a plane more benevolent than its counterpoint of a universe hardwired to indifference.

Now the ash of their aspirations lay bitter on his tongue. He was certain he would not have done differently, but oh, if only he had known how briefly the taste of the possible would be sweet on his lips.

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.

Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel's childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. 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.

The key ingredient to any kind of happiness or success is to never give less than your best

But that's the thing about basketball: you don't play games on paper.

I sometimes think with Moliere, Mr. Ridge, that ‘there is no folly equal to he who attempts to mend the world.’” A single, unsuppressed laugh escaped him. “Yes,” he reluctantly replied, “but I cannot but help to attempt it, nonetheless.

The Song of Kali is with us. It has been with us for a very long time. Its chorus grows and grows and grows. But there are other voices to be heard. There are other songs to be sung.

Losing your family….it puts fear in a different perspective,” he said. “Besides, I got by all right. I stayed on the fringe around Chicago, hoped around tent cities and Red Cross camps. Worked for some people who didn’t ask questions. Avoided case-workers and foster care. And thought about you.” “Me?” I huffed, completely unsettled. In awe at how vanilla my life seemed. In awe of what he’d endured, He turned then, meeting my eyes for the first time. When he spoke, his voice was gentle, and unashamed. “You. The only thing in my life that doesn’t change. When everything went to hell, you were all I had.

Francis Crozier believes in nothing. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It has no plan, no point, no hidden mysteries that make up for the oh-so-obvious miseries and banalities. Nothing he has learned in the past six months has persuaded him otherwise. Has it?

I hope that one day you’ll find that source of light and let it heal you, too. Because if you do, it will illuminate your path and eventually lead you home. To me.

Choose again.

The fear, momentarily paused, returned with full force, and in this frantic, baffled state I ran to him, and leapt into his arms. He seemed surprised at first but soon was squeezing back. "It's all right," he soothed. "No one's hurt. You're okay." His words sliced through me, and for the first time since he'd taken me from school, I knew the truth about us: I could not be okay if he was not okay. Pain, nightmares, fighting- all of it aside- he was a part of me.

Without heartache, there is no understanding of the true meaning of love. Without anger, passion cannot be comprehended. Without fear, there is nothing gained when overcome. And without sorrow, happiness can never be realized.

You’ve always been my sunshine. Ever since we were kids.” He tightens his gaze. “I know you’re still in there, Bree. And I will find you.

Once he'd been an open book and the days had been too short to hold all our words.

They've forgotten, or maybe they've never learning, that their worth is not determined by how much a man wants them.

It's them, Miller. Not us. It's the FBR that should be sorry.

Life is too short to have anything but delusional notions about yourself.

Sol had not known he was lonely until he met Sarai.

Every being in this world makes an impact on at least one person they encounter during their lifetime. You can change the course of someone’s life by just a kind word, a hateful one, or even by simply choosing not to say anything at all. Every choice you make has the potential to create a ripple effect, trickling into and affecting the lives of others.

Men who read a lot have a more sensitive disposition, added Fowler. [...] I did not know what to say to this. Maybe reading is a sort of curse is all I mean, concluded Fowler. Maybe it's better for a man to stay inside his own mind. Amen, I felt like saying, although I do not know why.

Hush. Listen now. I need to say a couple of mom things. Listen, because this is important. Eat more- you're getting too skinny. And smile. Oh, and don't believe anyone who says they'll pay you back later; they never do. And one more thing, I have never loved one single thing in my life more than you. You were worth living for, and Ember, you were worth dying for.

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

The simplicity of living astounds me. But it’s the terror of death that devours me.

Orphanages are the only places that ever left me feeling empty and full at the same time.

Losing your family... it puts fear in a different perspective, Chase had once told me.

You didn't lose everything." "Neither did you.

The words sounded like a mournful incantation.

His imagination was always more real than the reality of daily life.

You can do anything you put your mind to, and you can do it in stilettos.

How cold and foreign this city seemed, that even death could pass unnoticed.

anything a guy can do a girl can do better...except being stupid

Sometimes,” said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, “dreams are all that separate us from the machines.

THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER MISUSE OF THIS CHANNEL. YOU ARE DISTURBING OTHERS WHO ARE USING IT TO SERIOUS PURPOSE. ACCESS WILL BE RESTORED WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS FOR. GOODBYE

Goddamn fatherfucking asshole politician moral paraplegic dipshit drag-queen bitch!

This is your fault. I'm going to kill you. And all the cake is gone. You don't even care, do you?

A philosopher/mathematician named Bertrand Russell who lived and died in the same century as Gass once wrote: “Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.” Here is the essence of mankind’s creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatazoa attacking an ovum.

Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse?

You go on, each day, as though you’re happy and at peace with your life. Or at least trying to convince yourself that you are. But you also go on, each day, not really living.

Meaning no disrespect, sir, but there's no way in the Good Lord's fucking universe that anyone can bar accidents or the unexpected.

Women are from Mars, men have a penis

Happy new year everbody! And remember: be kind to eachother.

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

The universe is indifferent to our fates. This was the crushing burden that the character took with him as he struggled through the surf toward survival or extinction. The universe just does not give a shit.

No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing.

They stood in the pool of lantern light, the house still around them. She placed a hand to calm his still heaving chest, the heat of his body fresh from travel. The coolness of her hand made him start, then he pulled her close. It was more than her body he needed.

Beautiful people tend to be ugly, ugly people tend to be beautiful, storms tend to brew below a person’s cool, calm exterior, and tremendously happy people tend to be overcompensating for their own grief. Nothing is ever really what it seems.

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.

Many of the most accomplished girls are disconnecting from the truest parts of themselves, sacrificing essential self-knowledge to the pressure of who they think they ought to be.

Quality wine, Scotch, and coffee had been the three irreplaceable commodities after the death of Old Earth.

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

... pain has been with him since birth - the universe's gift to a poet ...

I knew the truth about us: I could not be okay if he was not okay. Pain, nightmares, fighting- all of it aside- he was a part of me.

Odd how the daily imperatives persist even in the face of collective disaster.

at that moment, the sum of the crowd’s IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.

I'd rather be a wolf than a girl any day.

Do you think I'm fat?" I asked him. He swallowed and wiped his mouth. "I think you're beautiful.

Life is a series of adjustments; You can make changes along the way, but if you dodn't start moving forward you'll never get anywhere!

You want to be a hero,” he repeated. “You want to be one of those rare human beings who make history, rather than merely watch it flow around them like water around a rock.

People always pay a lot of money for things that make them stupid.

The problem with being passionately in love ... is that it deprives you of too much sleep.

I just don't understand what you see in her," Sim said carefully. "I know she's charming. Fascinating and all of that. But she seems rather," he hesitated, "cruel." I nodded. "She is." Simmon watched me expectantly, finally said. "What? No defense for her?" "No. Cruel is a good word for her. But I think you are saying cruel and thinking of something else. Denna is not wicked, or mean, or spiteful. She is cruel." Sim was quiet for a long while before responding. "I think she might be some of those things, and cruel as well." Good, honest gentle Sim. He could never bring himself to say bad things about another person, just imply them. Even that was hard for him. He looked up at me. "I talked with Savoy. He's still not over her. He really loved her, you know. Treated her like a princess. He would have done anything for her. But she left him anyway, no explanation." "Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately was hurt. The same is true of Denna." "What's a hind?" "A deer." "I thought that was a hart?" "A hind is a female deer. A wild deer. Do you know how much good it does you to chase a wild thing? None. It works against you. It startles the hind away. All you can do is stay gently where you are, and hope in time that the hind will come to you.

Stand as I did after throwing the switch, a murderer, a betrayer, but still proud, feet firmly planted on Hyperion’s shifting sand, head held high, fist raised against the sky, crying “A plague on both your houses!

The Ice Master was too injured and too exhausted to crawl any farther. Let whatever was going to happen to him happen now and may a Sailor's God fuck to Hell this fucking thing that was going to eat him.

God did not choose Herod or Pontius Pilate or Caesar Augustus as His instrument. He chose the unknown son of an unknown carpenter in one of the least important stretches of the Roman Empire.

The life of a poet lies not merely in the finite language-dance of expression but in the nearly infinite combinations of perception and memory combined with the sensitivity to what is perceived and remembered.

And above it all the butterfly effect. The sure knowledge that the entire life of a human being is like a single day in that human's life: unplannable, unpredictable, governed by the hidden tides of chaotic factors and buffered by butterfly wings...

You won't forget me, right?" I tried to play it light so maybe he wouldn't see just how scared I was for tomorrow. For a second, the corners of his eyes pinched. Then he sat up, and I backed onto my knees. His hands straightened my T-shirt, tugging it down. "No," he said. His face darkened. "I don't think it's possible to forget you.

His green eyes blazed with desire; such a different look than I'd known before. Chase had studied me, reading my feelings. Tucker was only trying to see his own reflection. Disturbing on several levels.

The sunset was that long, achingly beautiful balance of stillness in which the sun seemed to hover like a red balloon above the western horizon, the entire sky catching fire from the death of day; a sunset unique to the American Midwest and ignored by most of its inhabitants. The twilight brought the promise of coolness and the certain threat of night.

Sol Weintraub suddenly understood perfectly why Abraham had agreed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, when the Lord commanded him to do so. It was not obedience. It was not even to put the love of God above the love of his son. Abraham was testing God. By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife, God had earned the right—in Abraham’s eyes and the hearts of his offspring—to become the God of Abraham. Sol

I think some people are just inexplicably bonded. Drawn by forces beyond their own comprehension, they have no choice but to gravitate toward one another. Destined by fate to keep crossing paths until they finally get it right.

He cleared his throat, fixing his eyes on the road. "Why are you looking at me like that?" All the hard edges within me had shimmered and gone soft. "You said I was beautiful." He smirked and settled back in his seat. "I guess I did.

He loved the darkness and the mystery of the Catholic service--the tall priest strutting like a carrion crow and pronouncing magic in a dead language, the immediate magic of the Eucharist bringing the dead back to life so that the faithful could devour Him and become of Him, the smell of incense and the mystical chanting.

evolution is not progress, that there is no ‘goal’ or direction to evolution. Evolution is change. Evolution ‘succeeds’ if that change best adapts some leaf or branch of its tree of life to conditions of the universe.

My ma taught me one thing from the beginning: My body is mine. My own. No one else’s. Just because somebody thinks they have rights to it, doesn’t make it true. I thought I understood that before, but here, in this place, it’s become more clear than ever how right she was. My flesh and blood–it’s the only thing I own, and I’ll defend it until I can’t fight anymore.

Face your fears and overcome them. Become the best person you can be as you grow into your impending adulthood. Find what drives you and hone those skills. Practice them and perfect them, so that you can leave this world in a better state than you found it.

The Chinese poet George Wu ... recorded on his comlog: "Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become." Later, on his last disk to his lover the week before he died, Wu said: "Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

Before I ever knew what the word Entrepeneur was, I realized in America and in the Western part of the world in general, you are given the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. And that is all anyone should ever expect from the Capitalist system. The rest is up to you. It's up to you to educate yourself. It's up to you to learn speaking skills and people skills. It's up to you to try (and usually fail, but to try again) all sorts of ventures. The rest is a combination of hard work, being at the right place ...at the right time...with the right thing...oh yes...and more (never ending) hard work.

Sometimes there is no hope," whispered Das. "There's always some hope, Mr. Das." "No, Mr. Luczak, there is not. Sometimes there is only pain. And acquiescence to pain. And, perhaps, defiance at the world which demands such pain." "Defiance is a form of hope, is it not, sir?

...en route to the final destination, which was always to get trashed, wasted, hammered, crunked up, bombed, wrecked, sloshed, fried, flapjacked, fucked-up, or get plainlong fucked, laid, drained, get some ass, get some head, some skull, a lube job, get your oil changed, get some brown sugar, quiff, goo, pussy...

Religion and ethics were not always - or even frequently - mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often deflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice.

The twisted limbs of the woods outside cast eerie shadows through the translucent ceiling above, while the flowers scattered all around, bright, and vibrant, filled the space with light. It felt as if I’d stepped into a world of both life and death; a dance of the macabre, of that which is real, and that which lies beyond.

It has been my experience that immediately after certain traumatic separations—leaving one’s family to go to war, for instance, or upon the death of a family member, or after parting from one’s beloved with no assurances of reunion—there is a strange calmness, almost a sense of relief, as if the worst has happened and nothing else need be dreaded.

Where religious values might be relative, intellectual values fleeting, moral values ambiguous, and aesthetic values dependent upon an observer, the existence value of any thing is infinite—thus the “mountains in the sun”—and being infinite, equal to every other thing and all truths.

Loneliness wasn't just a state of mind, was it? It was tactile. She could feel it. It was a sixth sense, not in some fanciful play of words, but physically. It hurt... it hurt like phagocytes devouring the white matter of her brain. It was merely that she had no friends. She didn't even have a sanctuary in which she could simply be alone.

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?

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.

We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. What other creature in God's wide domain would carry the memory of you, Fanny, dust these nine hundred years, and allow it to eat away at him even as consumption does the same work with its effortless efficiency? Words assail me. The thought of books makes me ache. Poetry echoes in my mind, and if I had the ability to banish it, I would do so at once.

Let me say this. It was worth the whole awful, irritating time spent searching the Archives just to watch that moment happen. It was worth blood and fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn’t notice it herself. It wasn’t dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and spark fades almost too fast for to you to see. But still, you know it’s there, downs where you can’t see, kindling.

I discovered what a mental stimulant physical labor could be; not mere physical labor, I should add, but absolutely spine-bending, lung-racking, gut-ripping, ligament-tearing, and ball-breaking physical labor. But as long as the task is both onerous and repetitive, I discovered, the mind is not only free to wander to more imaginative climes, it actually flees to higher planes.

Rage. Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus’ son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you’re at it, Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede. Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor born-against-his-will Hockenberry, dead Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to his friends, to friends long since turned to dust on a world long since left behind. Sing of my rage, yes, of my rage, O Muse, small and insignificant though that rage might be when measured against the anger of the immortal gods, or when compared to the wrath of the god-killer Achilles. On second though, O Muse, sing nothing of me. I know you. I have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch. And I do not trust you, O Muse. Not one little bit.

He enjoyed the soft sound of night wind and the knowledge that he was the only boy — perhaps the only human being — out there in the dark on the windy, frozen-grass meadows on this night that smelled of coming snow, alienated from the lighted windows and the warm hearths, very aware that he was of the village but not part of it at that moment. It was a thrilling, almost erotic feeling — an illicit discovery of self separated from everyone and everything else in the cold and dark

I remember that day in early May after Le Vesconte's and Private Pilkington's brief joint burial service, one of the men suggested that we name the small spur of land where they were buried "Le Vesconte Point," but Captain Crozier vetoed that idea, saying that if we named every place where one of us might end up buried after the dead person there, we'd run out of land before we ran out of names.

When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it. If it's not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your business. You just know more about what is, what isn't, and how little time there is to learn the difference.

There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always - always - returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred.

I will not try to describe the beauty of life in a Swarm ‒ their zero-gravity globe cities and comet farms and thrust clusters, their micro-orbital forests and migrating rivers and the ten thousand colors and textures of life at Rendezvous Week. Suffice it to say that I believe the Ousters have done what Web humanity has not in the past millennia: evolved. While we live in our derivative cultures, pale reflections of Old Earth life, the Ousters have explored new dimensions of aesthetics and ethics and biosciences and art and all the things that must change and grow to reflect the human soul.

Shame is a virus that creates paralysis in its hosts. When you're busy telling yourself what a bad person you are, you expend most of your energy obsessing over your self- not what you may have done wrong, not what you can do to fix it. For this reason, shame creates a moat around girls' potential. It limits their ability or willingness to face challenges. It makes them want to be alone, isolating them from friends, their most important buffer against stress. Shame is therefore a major threat to girls' resilience.

Sol, listen,” came the Voice, modulated now so it did not boom from far above but almost whispered in his ear, “the future of humankind depends upon your choice. Can you offer Rachel out of love, if not obedience?” Sol heard the answer in his mind even as he groped for the words. There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always—always—returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred. Not this time. Not ever again.

The cruciform does not like pain. Nor do I but, like the cruciform, I am willing to use it to serve my purposes. And I will do so consciously, not instinctively like the mindless mass of alien tissue embedded in me. This thing only seeks a mindless avoidance of death by any means. I do not wish to die, but I welcome pain and death rather than an eternity of mindless life. Life is sacred--I still hold to that as a core element of the Church's though and teachings these past twenty-eight hundred years when life has been so cheap--but even more sacred is the soul. I realize now that what I was trying to do with the Armaghast data was offer the Church not a rebirth but only a transition to a false life such as these poor walking corpses inhabit. If the Church is meant to die, it must do so--but do so gloriously, in the full knowledge of its rebirth in Christ. It must go into the darkness not willingly but well--bravely and firm of faith--like the millions who have gone before us, keeping faith with all those generations facing death in the isolated silence of death camps and nuclear fireballs and cancer wards and pogroms, going into the darkness, if not hopefully, then prayerful that there is some reason for it all, something worth the price of all that pain, all those sacrifices., 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 the all too shakable conviction of faith. And if they have been able to sustain that slim hope in the face of darkness, then so must I... and so must the Church.