Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.
Dan SimmonsRead
Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Words can distort our perception of reality, causing us to live in self-created illusions.
In this quote, Dan Simmons reflects on how language shapes our thoughts and perceptions, often leading us away from objective reality. The imagery of 'brain mansions built of words' suggests that our mental constructs—shaped by language—can trap us in illusions, preventing us from recognizing the true nature of our experiences and the world around us.
Themes
LanguagePerceptionRealityThoughtIllusion
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on communication, one might use this quote to illustrate the complexities of language.
More from Dan Simmons
All quotes →Poetry is only secondarily about words. Primarily, it is about truth. I dealt with the Ding an Sich, the substance behind the shadow, weaving powerful concepts, similes, and connections the way an engineer would raise a skyscraper with the whiskered-alloy skeleton being constructed long before the glass and plastic and chromaluminum appears.
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I loved you backward and forward in time. I loved you beyond boundaries of time and space.
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I now understand the need for faith - pure, blind, fly-in-the-face-of-reason faith - as a small life preserver in the wild and endless sea of a universe ruled by unfeeling laws and totally indifferent to the small, reasoning beings that inhabit it.
Dan SimmonsRead
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