# Quote — Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

> Although there are those among us now who have been granted the gift of being able to glimpse patterns of the future, probabilities tossed like dice on the uneven blanket of space and time, even these gifted ones know that no single future has been preordained for us or our posterity. Events are fluid. The future is like smoke from a burning forest, waiting for the wind of specific events and personal courage to blow the sparks and embers of reality this way or that.

- Author: [Dan Simmons](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons.md)
- Book: [The Rise of Endymion](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion.md)
- Page: 535
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Simmons#The_Rise_of_Endymion_(1997)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion/although-there-are

## More from this book

> If one is to observe, M. Endymion, one must be in the proper place to observe.

p. 701 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion/if-one-is-to-observe.md)

> “One of the few benefits of the fall of civilization as we know it,” he says, “is that there are private cellars with fine vintages everywhere one digs. It is not theft. It is archaeology.”

p. 674 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion/one-of-the.md)

> There are no ghosts, my love. Death is final. The soul is that ineffable combination of memory and personality which we carry through life...when life departs, the soul also dies. Except for what we leave in the memory of those who loved us.

p. 578 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dan-simmons/the-rise-of-endymion/there-are-no-ghosts.md)