Endymion (Hyperion Cantos, #3)

by Dan Simmons

last. To share these memories is the reason that I am writing.

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” wrote some pre-Hegira writer. Precisely. I must see these things in order to know what to think of them. I must see the events turned to ink and the emotions in print to believe that they actually occurred and touched me.

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.

I looked at Martin Silenus and tried to imagine having centuries of memories to contend with. How could anyone stay sane with entire lifetimes stored in one human mind? The old poet was grinning at me in that wild way of his, and once again I wondered if he was sane.

The very thought of mixing government and religious opinion was barbaric …

“I don’t mean hero as in the fools who throw themselves on plasma grenades,” he continued, licking his thin lips with a lizard’s flick of tongue. “I mean hero as in he whose prowess and beneficence is so legendary that he comes to be honored as a divinity. I mean hero in the literary sense, as in central protagonist given to forceful action. I mean hero as in he whose tragic flaws will be his undoing.”

So many important things pass quickly without being understood at the time. So many powerful moments are buried beneath the absurd.

Information is always to be treasured, Raul. It is behind only love and honesty in a person’s attempt to understand the universe.

“Father thought that the first stage of human happiness was a ‘fellowship with essence,’ ” she said softly. I could see that A. Bettik was listening from his place at the steering pole. “By that,” she said, “Father meant an imaginative and sensuous response to nature … just the sort of feeling you were describing earlier.”

the suicidal smell of cigarettes,

“Entropy is a bitch,” I said. “Now, now,” said Aenea from where she was leaning on the terrace wall. “Entropy can be our friend.” “When?” I said. She turned around so that she was leaning back on her elbows. The building behind her was a dark rectangle, serving to highlight the glow of her sunburned skin. “It wears down empires,” she said. “And does in despotisms.” “That’s a hard phrase to say quickly,”

De Soya nods politely, having no clue as to how this relates to what they were discussing. Perhaps the Cardinal, as is true of many men and women of power, has become used to digressing at will because his underlings never protest the loss of focus.

Now I know that the Chitchatuk would never steal from me. Even if their lives depended on it. Even if the lives of their children depended on it.”

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

I had realized when I was a boy that I would always be an outsider when it came to holy places … never having one of my own, never feeling comfortable in another’s.

Life is brutal that way … the loss of irrecoverable moments amid trivia and distraction.