Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
― The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
― The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
“Do not submit yourselves to men who have not yet learned the importance of self-mastery or control. Submission is a gift. You are to be treasured. Do not give him the reward of such sensuous beauty before he has given you the devotion, attention, and affection properly due you. Value yourselves.”
―
―
“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
―
―
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”
―
―
Dan Simmons Fans
— 171 members
— last activity Mar 22, 2026 05:36AM
This group is for all fans of Dan Simmons' books. ...more
William’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at William’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by William
Lists liked by William




























