Education Quote by Dan Simmons

A quarter-century is doing quiet heavy lifting here: it frames what follows as origin myth, not mere anecdote. Simmons opens with the kind of plainspoken timestamp you’d hear at a reading before the lights dim and the story turns strange. The sentence is deliberately unflashy, almost stubbornly domestic. “Teaching elementary school” yanks the author off the pedestal and puts him in a classroom where attention is earned, not granted. It signals discipline, routine, and an intimacy with how people actually talk when they’re not performing.

The subtext is credibility-by-ordinariness. “Small town in Missouri” isn’t just geography; it’s a cultural shorthand for the unglamorous middle of America, a place imagined as baseline reality. By anchoring his narrative there, Simmons invites the reader to treat whatever comes next as something discovered, not invented - as if the material rose out of lived experience rather than genre contrivance. That’s a useful move for a novelist known for speculative and horror-tinged work: start with fluorescent lights and spelling tests, then earn the right to introduce the uncanny.

The intent also feels strategic in a career-story sense. Twenty-five years implies persistence, an apprenticeship, a slow burn. It tells aspiring writers: the work began before the work “worked.” Even the pronoun choice - “I” rather than “one” - keeps it personal, confessional, almost modest. The line isn’t trying to impress; it’s trying to be believed. That’s how it pulls you in.