“To see and feel one’s beloved naked for the first time is one of life’s pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.”

— Dan Simmons, book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 18 (pp. 348-349)

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Dan Simmons104

American novelist 1948

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