“L'Homme a peur. Il a toujours vécu dans la peur. Il a peur. Peur de lui-même.”
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Citations de ses romans, Au carrefour des étoiles, 1963
Clifford Donald Simak, né le 3 août 1904 à Millville au Wisconsin et mort le 25 avril 1988 à Minneapolis au Minnesota, est un auteur américain de science-fiction. Les origines modestes de ce fils de fermiers modèleront la plupart des personnages de ses romans. Ses thèmes favoris sont la nature et les robots anthropomorphiques. Son œuvre la plus connue est Demain les chiens.
Il a gagné plusieurs prix Hugo et prix Nebula. En 1976, il reçoit le prix Damon-Knight Memorial Grand Master de la SFWA pour l'ensemble de sa carrière. C'est ainsi que Clifford D. Simak peut être considéré comme faisant partie des écrivains de l'âge d'or de la science-fiction, au même titre que Ray Bradbury ou Isaac Asimov. Wikipedia

“L'Homme a peur. Il a toujours vécu dans la peur. Il a peur. Peur de lui-même.”
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Citations de ses romans, Au carrefour des étoiles, 1963
Citations de ses romans, Demain les chiens (City), 1944
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Citations de ses romans, Au carrefour des étoiles, 1963
“La galaxie était une tour de Babel.”
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Citations de ses romans, Au carrefour des étoiles, 1963
“Il y avait pour l'homme une route et une seule : celle de l'arc et de la flèche.”
Citations de ses romans, Demain les chiens (City), 1944
Citations de ses romans, Demain les chiens (City), 1944
Citations de ses romans, Demain les chiens (City), 1944
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Citations de ses romans, Au carrefour des étoiles, 1963
“Vous ne devez pas traîner le souvenir de l'Homme comme un boulet.”
Citations de ses romans, Demain les chiens (City), 1944
“Combien de guerres les Terriens pourront-ils encore supporter?”
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Citations de ses romans, Au carrefour des étoiles, 1963
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Citations de ses romans, Au carrefour des étoiles, 1963
“La cité est un anachronisme.”
Citations de ses romans, Demain les chiens (City), 1944
“Le besoin de chaque être humain est de se sentir approuvé par ses semblables.”
Citations de ses romans, Demain les chiens (City), 1944
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 25
Contexte: That had not been the first time nor had it been the last, but all the years of killing boiled down in essence to that single moment — not the time that came after, but that long and terrible instant when he had watched the lines of men purposefully striding up the slope to kill him.
It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death or misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle.
Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 30
Contexte: Ulysses, he thought, had not told him all the truth about the Talisman. He had told him that it had disappeared and that the galaxy was without it, but he had not told him that for many years its power and glory had been dimmed by the failure of its custodian to provide linkage between the people and the force. And all that time the corrosion occasioned by that failure had eaten away at the bonds of the galactic cofraternity.
Clifford D. Simak livre A Heritage of Stars
A Heritage of Stars (1977)
Contexte: Space is an illusion, and time as well. There is no such factor as either time or space. We have been blinded by our own cleverness, blinded by false perceptions of those qualities that we term eternity and infinity. There is another factor that explains it all, and once this universal factor is recognized, everything grows simple. There is no longer any mystery, no longer any wonder, no longer any doubt; for the simplicity of it all lies before us...
Clifford D. Simak livre Time and Again
Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter I (p. 6)
Contexte: There is mystery here, but a soft, sure mystery that is understood and only remains a mystery because I want it so. The mystery of the nighthawk against a darkening sky, the puzzle of the firefly along the lilac hedge.
“The people finally know.
They've been told about the mutants.”
Clifford D. Simak livre Ring Around the Sun
Ring Around the Sun (1954)
Contexte: The people finally know.
They've been told about the mutants.
And they hated the mutants.
Of course, they hated them.
They hated them because the existence of the mutants makes them second-class humans, because they are Neanderthalers suddenly invaded by a bow and arrow people.
Clifford D. Simak livre Cemetery World
Cemetery World (1973)
Contexte: The sun was setting, throwing a fog-like dusk across the stream and trees, and there was a coolness in the air. It was time, I knew, to be getting back to camp. But I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back, it would not be the same; no matter how many times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment.
As quoted in the Associated Press obituary (27 April 1988)
Contexte: I have tried at times to place humans in perspective against the vastness of universal time and space. I have been concerned with where we, as a race, may be going and what may be our purpose in the universal scheme — if we have a purpose. In general, I believe we do, and perhaps an important one.
“How strange it is, he thought, how so many senseless things shape our destiny.”
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 32
Contexte: How strange it is, he thought, how so many senseless things shape our destiny. For the rifle range had been a senseless thing, as senseless as a billiard table or a game of cards — designed for one thing only, to please the keeper of the station. And yet the hours he'd spent there had shaped toward this hour and end, to this single instant on this restricted slope of ground.
“That is not what I said. I said the Highway of Eternity.”
Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity
Highway of Eternity (1986)
Contexte: Boone gulped and swallowed. He spoke to The Hat.
"You said the Highway to Eternity?"
That is not what I said. I said the Highway of Eternity.
"Small difference," Boone told him.
Not so small as you might think.
Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity
Highway of Eternity (1986)
Contexte: He stirred again, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, and he was not alone. Across the fire from him sat, or seemed to sit, a man wrapped in some all-enveloping covering that might have been a cloak, wearing on his head a conical hat that dropped down so far it hid his face. Beside him sat the wolf — the wolf, for Boone was certain that it was the same wolf with which he'd found himself sitting nose to nose when he had wakened the night before. The wolf was smiling at him, and he had never known that a wolf could smile.
He stared at the hat. Who are you? What is this about?
He spoke in his mind, talking to himself, not really to the hat. He had not spoken aloud for fear of startling the wolf.
The Hat replied. It is about the brotherhood of life. Who I am is of no consequence. I am only here to act as an interpreter.
An interpreter for whom?
For the wolf and you.
But the wolf does not talk.
No, he does not talk. But he thinks. He is greatly pleased and puzzled.
Puzzled I can understand. But pleased?
He feels a sameness with you. He senses something in you that reminds him of himself. He puzzles what you are.
In time to come, said Boone, he will be one with us. He will become a dog.
If he knew that, said The Hat, it would not impress him. He thinks now to be one with you. An equal. A dog is not your equal...
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 33
Contexte: A machine, a mechanism, no more than a tool — technological brother to the hoe, the wrench, the hammer — and yet as far a cry from these as the human brain was from that first amino acid which had come into being on this planet when the Earth was very young. One was tempted, Enoch thought, to say that this was as far as a tool could go, that it was the ultimate in the ingenuity possessed by any brain. But that would be a dangerous way of thinking, for perhaps there was no limit, there might, quite likely, be no such condition as the ultimate; there might be no time when any creature or any group of creatures could stop at any certain point and say, this is as far as we can go, there is no use of trying to go farther. For each new development produced, as side effects, so many other possibilities, so many other roads to travel, that with each step one took down any given road there were more paths to follow. There'd never be an end, he thought — no end to anything.
“The wolf was smiling at him, and he had never known that a wolf could smile.”
Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity
Highway of Eternity (1986)
Contexte: He stirred again, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, and he was not alone. Across the fire from him sat, or seemed to sit, a man wrapped in some all-enveloping covering that might have been a cloak, wearing on his head a conical hat that dropped down so far it hid his face. Beside him sat the wolf — the wolf, for Boone was certain that it was the same wolf with which he'd found himself sitting nose to nose when he had wakened the night before. The wolf was smiling at him, and he had never known that a wolf could smile.
He stared at the hat. Who are you? What is this about?
He spoke in his mind, talking to himself, not really to the hat. He had not spoken aloud for fear of startling the wolf.
The Hat replied. It is about the brotherhood of life. Who I am is of no consequence. I am only here to act as an interpreter.
An interpreter for whom?
For the wolf and you.
But the wolf does not talk.
No, he does not talk. But he thinks. He is greatly pleased and puzzled.
Puzzled I can understand. But pleased?
He feels a sameness with you. He senses something in you that reminds him of himself. He puzzles what you are.
In time to come, said Boone, he will be one with us. He will become a dog.
If he knew that, said The Hat, it would not impress him. He thinks now to be one with you. An equal. A dog is not your equal...
Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity
Highway of Eternity (1986)
Contexte: What your friend told you of his seeing of the time wall is true, Henry said in Boone's mind. I know he saw it, although imperfectly. Your friend is most unusual. So far as I know, no other human actually can see it; although there are ways of detecting time. I tried to show him a sniffler. There are a number of snifflers, trying to sniff out the bubble. They know there's something strange, but don't know what it is.
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Source: Way Station
Clifford D. Simak livre A Heritage of Stars
A Heritage of Stars (1977)
“Memory and dust, he thought, link us to the past.”
Clifford D. Simak livre Time and Again
Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter XLIII (p. 224)
Clifford D. Simak livre Time and Again
Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter XXVI (p. 139)
Clifford D. Simak livre A Choice of Gods
Ch 7
A Choice of Gods (1972)
Clifford D. Simak livre City
Notes on the Fifth Tale (p. 120)
City (1952)
Why Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967)
Clifford D. Simak livre Time is the Simplest Thing
Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 11 (p. 87)
Introduction (p. ix)
Short Fiction, Skirmish (1977)
Clifford D. Simak livre Time is the Simplest Thing
Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 9 (p. 70)
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 34
Clifford D. Simak livre Time and Again
Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter XXXV (p. 183)
Clifford D. Simak livre Au carrefour des étoiles
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 12
Clifford D. Simak livre Ring Around the Sun
Ring Around the Sun (1954)