Quotes from Neal Stephenson

Maybe we should go back and get their guns," Marlon suggested. "That's how it would work in a video game," Csongor said, which was his way of agreeing.

A speech with magical force. Nowadays, people don't believe in these kinds of things. Except in the Metaverse, that is, where magic is possible. The Metaverse is a fictional structure made out of code. And code is just a form of speech—the form that computers understand. The Metaverse in its entirety could be considered a single vast nam-shub, enacting itself on L. Bob Rife's fiber-optic network.

Reader, if you don't know what a database is, rest assured that an explanation of the concept would in no way increase your enjoyment in reading this account.

And then she figures out something important: These people aren't looking at her. They're not even giving her a second glance. They're all looking at Raven. And it's not just a case of celebrity watching or something like that. All of these Raft dudes, these tough scary homeboys of the sea, are scared shitless of this guy. And she's on a date with him. And it's just started.

It was then that she cut him off in midsentence and said that it was over. She said it with a certainty and a conviction in her voice and her face that left him fascinated and awed. Because guys, at least of his age, didn't have the confidence to make major decisions from their gut like that. They had to build a superstructure of rational thought on top of it. But not Zula. She didn't have to decide. She just had to pass on the news.

Y.T. is maxing at a Mom's Truck Stop on 405, waiting for her ride. Not that she would ever be caught dead at a Mom's Truck Stop. If, like, a semi ran her over with all eighteen of its wheels in front of a Mom's Truck Stop, she would drag herself down the shoulder of the highway using her eyelid muscles until she reached a Snooze 'n' Cruise full of horny derelicts rather than go into a Mom's Truck Stop.

Identity" had been forever changed by the Internet; formerly it had meant "who you really are" but now it meant "any one of a number of persistent faces that you can present to the digital universe.

And so what moved him onward and down the office building's stairway was not any sort of foolish hope that he could actually be saved, but competitive fury at the fact that he had been outdone by the suicidal improvisations of this fanatic.

Actually, I've been thinking about that," Tristan said, and finally sat down again. "It's the dog that didn't bark.

Most of the people around the entrance were, of course, bellhops and taxi drivers. Guests went in and out. Some were dressed in business suits, others in casual tourist attire. He did not see any commandos in tracksuits.

She definitely heard the words for airplane and airport, which delighted some little-girl part of her soul ("Yay, going on a trip!") even as her higher brain was ticking off all the bad things that could happen when men like Jones came into proximity with jet aircraft.

Other bits of England might be cramped, crowded, and cluttered, but only because all the available space had been claimed by this guest suite. It was situated right in Trinity College, and Richard guessed it had been laid out eight hundred years ago so that noble guests could ride their horses directly into the bedchamber and bring all of their squires and wolfhounds with them too.

while people were not genetically different, they were culturally as different as they could possibly be, and that some cultures were simply better than others.

Donald Cameron has his own character in the world now!?" Skeletor exclaimed, in somewhat the same tone of voice as a tribune might have said, Hannibal has crossed the Alps with elephants!?

Sometimes, if you want to live and breathe tomorrow, you have to dive into the black depths today, and that is a leap of faith - faith in your U-boat, and your crew - beside which the saints' religious epiphanies amount to nothing.

You're going to fly a radioactive ice ball the size of the Death Star back here just as the shit is hitting the fan—then what?

Cord followed up with, "I like it here, but it's beginning to feel creepy. Does anyone else think it's creepy?" "You're talking to a bunch of guys," Yul said. "No one here is going to validate your feelings." She tossed sand at him.

But Henry wasn't a parent, and he didn't understand that when you were, almost nothing was more satisfying than seeing your kid sleep.

Not that any of the sysadmin's knowledge and skills were applicable here. The psychological stance was the thing: the implicit faith, a little naive and a little cocky, that by banging his head against the problem for long enough he'd be able to break through in the end.

Why do they believe that?" "Because we are hackers," Csongor said, "and they have seen movies.

he liked his transcendence out in plain sight where he could keep an eye on it -- say, in a nice stained-glass window -- not woven through the fabric of life like gold threads through a brocade.

Every parent of a teenager gets used to it: the moment in a child's life when he or she decides that certain facts are just too much trouble to explain to Mom or Dad. The parents can't, and needn't, know every last little thing. They just have to accept this, be content with what they can glean on their own, and move on.

There is a certain kind of small town that grows like a boil on the ass of every Army base in the world.

Hiro feels even at this moment that something has been torn open in the world and that he is dangling above the gap, staring into a place where he does not want to be.