Author: Dan Simmons

Cites

• Herman Melville (1)
  • IN: The Terror (2007) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathesome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark.
    FROM: Moby Dick, (1851), Novel, US
• Andrew Marvell (1)
  • IN: Ilium (2003) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness: The Mind, that Ocean where each kind Does straight its resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other Worlds, and other Seas; Annihilating all that’s made To a green Thought in a green Shade.
    FROM: The Garden, (1681), Poem, UK
• Homer (1)
  • IN: Ilium (2003) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Of possessions cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting, and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses, but a man’s life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeth’s barrier.
    FROM: Homer’s The Iliad, Book IX, 405–409, (-8), Poem, Greece
• Robert Browning (1)
  • IN: Ilium (2003) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.
    FROM: Caliban upon Setebos, (1864), NULL, UK
• Sir Scott, Walter (1)
  • IN: A Winter Haunting (2002) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: For he was speechless, ghastly, wan,Like him of whom the story ran,Who spoke the spectre hound in man.
    FROM: The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto VI, v. 26, (1805), Book, UK
• Sting (1)
  • IN: A Winter Haunting (2002) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The hounds of winter, they harry me down.
    FROM: The Hounds of Winter, (1996), Song, UK
• Lucian (1)
  • IN: Olympos (2005) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: How could Homer have known about these things? When all this happened he was a camel in Bactria!
    FROM: The Dream, (None), Book, Syria
• Joseph Conrad (1)
  • IN: Olympos (2005) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: … the real-life history of the earth must in the last instance be a history of a really relentless warfare. Neither his fellows, nor his gods, nor his passions will leave a man alone.
    FROM: Notes on Life and Letters, (1921), Book, Ukraine/England
• Percy Shelley (1)
  • IN: Olympos (2005) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: O write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death’s scroll must be— Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew. Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendor of its prime; And leave, if naught so bright may live, All earth can take or Heaven can give.
    FROM: Hellas, (1822), Book, UK
• Charles Dickens (1)
  • IN: Hard as Nails (2003) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: "Hard," replied the Dodger. "As nails," added Charley Bates.
    FROM: Twist, Oliver, (1838), Novel, UK
• A. C. Swinburne (1)
  • IN: Drood (2009) Fiction, Historical Fiction, Thriller, American
    EPIGRAPH: “What brought good Wilkie’s genius nigh perdition? Some demon whispered — ‘Wilkie! Have a mission.’ ”
    FROM: Fortnightly Review, Nov., 1889, (1889), Article, UK
• William of Occam (1)
  • IN: Darwin's Blade (2000) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Occam’s Razor: All other things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the correct one.
    FROM: Occam's Razor, (None), Saying, UK
• NULL (1)
  • IN: Darwin's Blade (2000) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Darwin’s Blade: All other things being equal, the simplest solution is usually stupidity.
    FROM: Darwin Minor, (2000), Fictional, NULL
• Saul Bellow (1)
  • IN: Song of Kali (None) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: ". . . there is a darkness. It is for everyone . . . Only some Greeks and admirers of theirs, in their liquid noon, where the friendship of beauty to human things was perfect, thought they were clearly divided from this darkness. And these Greeks too were in it. But still they are the admiration of the rest of the mud-sprung, famine- knifed, street-pounding, war- rattled, difficult, painstaking, kicked in the belly, grief and cartilage mankind, the multitude, some under a coal-sucking Vesuvius of chaos smoke, some inside a heaving Calcutta midnight, who very well know where they are."
    FROM: The Adventures of Augie March, (1953), Novel, US/Canada
• Christopher Marlowe (1)
  • IN: Song of Kali (1985) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: "Why, this is Hell; nor am I out of it."
    FROM: Dr. Faustus, (1604), Play, UK
• Sankha Ghosh (1)
  • IN: Song of Kali (1985) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: "Today everything happens in Calcutta . . . Who should I blame?"
    FROM: NULL, (None), [NA], India
• Dante Alighieri (1)
  • IN: The Hollow Man (1992) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Wandering between two worlds, one dead The other powerless to be born Thou shalt prove how salty tastes another’s bread, and how hard a path it is to go up and down another’s stairs.
    FROM: Paradiso XVII, (1472), Poem, Italy
• T. S. Eliot (1)
  • IN: The Hollow Man (1992) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear.
    FROM: The Hollow Men, (1925), Poem, UK
• Marcel Proust (1)
  • IN: Flashback (2011) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: We find a little of everything in our memory; it is a sort of pharmacy, a sort of chemical laboratory, in which our groping hand may come to rest now on a sedative drug, now on a dangerous poison.
    FROM: “The Captive,” Remembrance of Things Past, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, and Andreas Mayor, (1923), Novel, France
• William Blake (1)
  • IN: The Abominable: A Novel (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
    FROM: "Gnomic Verses", (1818), Poem, UK
• Norbert Wiener (1)
  • IN: The Fall of Hyperion (1990) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Can God play a significant game with his own creature? Can any creator, even a limited one, play a significant game with his own creature?
    FROM: God and Golem, Inc., (1964), Book, US
• John Keats (2)
  • IN: The Fall of Hyperion (1990) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth.
    FROM: Letter to his friend, (1817), Letter, UK