Artists Recognize Other Artists As Soon As

When I Get About Five Readers I Can Rub Together In One Genre, I Leave That Genre And Go Somewhere Else. And This Is Due To A Vow That I Made Myself When I Started Writing - That If I Had Any Success At All, I Would Not Be Bound To One Form Of Writing. That I Would Write What Moves Me. The Only Way I Can See Me Surviving And Doing More Than One Book Is To Present The Readers With A Dan Simmons Novel, With Whatever Tropes And Protocols From Whatever Genre I Want To Borrow Them. If That Builds A Dan Simmons Readership, Well Then, Okay. Otherwise, Forget About It. I'd Rather Drive A Truck.

Poetry Is Only Secondarily About Words. Primarily, It Is About Truth. I Dealt With The Ding An Sich, The Substance Behind The Shadow, Weaving Powerful Concepts, Similes, And Connections The Way An Engineer Would Raise A Skyscraper With The Whiskered-alloy Skeleton Being Constructed Long Before The Glass And Plastic And Chromaluminum Appears.

Anticlimax Is, Of Course, The Warp And Way Of Things. Real Life Seldom Structures A Decent Denouement.

Fate And Victory Shift ... Now This Way, Now That Way -- Like A Line Of Unarmored Men Under A Hail Of Enemy Arrows.

There Is A Fullness And Calmness There Which Can Come Only From Knowing Pain.