The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons (first line)
Wasn’t every self-inflicted wound really aimed at the conscience of the world? —Walter M. Miller, Jr. “The Darfstellar”
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. —Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion.
A year? What is a year? All time is relative. One day may be a lifetime, a year can be forever. It is not the number of days, but what goes into those days. —Louis L’Amour, The Warrior’s Path.
What the government funds, it controls; and what it controls, it owns.
Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island.
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.
Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion.
We need such men, lad, men who can look to the beyond, to ever strive for something out there beyond the stars. It is man’s destiny, I think, to go forward, ever forward.
Louis L’Amour, The Warrior’s Path
Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.
Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates
How lonely were those silent hills! How reaching out for the sounds of men, for I believe a land needs people to nurse its flesh and bring from it the goodness of crops.”
Louis L’Amour, The Warrior’s Path.
Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Powers.