Quotes from book
Hyperion

Hyperion
Dan Simmons

Hyperion is a Hugo Award-winning 1989 science fiction novel by American writer Dan Simmons. It is the first book of his Hyperion Cantos. The plot of the novel features multiple time-lines and characters. It follows a similar structure to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The next book in the series was The Fall of Hyperion, published in 1990.

“How about,” she said, “that you do the logical thing because it’s the logical thing to do?”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 5 (p. 315)

“It struck me that his dialect was actually the nondialect of someone who has learned a new language perfectly but without the lazy shortcuts of someone born to it.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 5 (p. 355)

“After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal (sic) which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 4 (p. 292)

“I ignore religions,” said Brawne Lamia. “I do not succumb to them.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 1 (p. 20)

“Listen! There will be no more offerings, neither child nor parent. There will be no more sacrifices for anyone other than our fellow human. The time of obedience and atonement is past.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 4 (p. 308)

“The story of Rachel’s unique illness was no secret in Crawford, of course. The fact of it had spread through the college the first year of Rachel’s return and the entire town knew soon after. Crawford reacted in the fashion of small towns immemorial—some tongues wagged constantly, some people could not keep the pity and pleasure at someone else’s misfortune out of their voices and gazes—but mostly the community had folded its protective wings around the Weintraub family like an awkward mother bird shielding its young.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 4 (p. 286)

“If our society ever opted for Orwell’s Big Brother approach, the instrument of choice for oppression would have to be the credit wake. In a totally noncash economy with only a vestigial barter black market, a person’s activities could be tracked in real time by monitoring the credit wake of his or her universal card. There were strict laws protecting card privacy but laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 5 (p. 345)

“Yes, our DNA is unique but so is a salamander’s.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 3 (p. 191)