No one inspired me to write, but writer Harlan Ellison terrified me into getting published.
Dan Simmons

There's a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don't believe exists in any other art form; as a reader, I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort, however flawed.
Dan Simmons

As long as my sixth graders showed an average improvement of five years, the principal and district pretty much left me alone to create my own curriculum and teach whatever I wanted.
Dan Simmons

It's one of the strangest attributes of this profession that when we writers get exhausted writing one thing, we relax by writing another.
Dan Simmons

Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.
Dan Simmons

Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.
Dan Simmons

I loved almost everything about being a teacher, but I was an unusual teacher.
Dan Simmons

But I think, and hope, that the novels can be understood and enjoyed as science fiction, on their own terms.
Dan Simmons