Quotes from Neal Stephenson

The powerless life raft, sloshing around the North Pacific, emits a vast, spreading plume of steam like that of an Iron Horse chugging full blast over the Continental Divide. Neither Hiro nor Eliot ever mentions, or even notices, the by-now-obvious fact that Fisheye is traveling with a small, self-contained nuclear power source.... As long as Fisheye refuses to notice this fact, it would be rude for them to bring it up.

There is one universe, by the definition of universe. It is not the cosmos we see through our eyes and our telescopes—that is but a single Narrative, a thread winding through a Hemn space shared by many other Narratives besides ours. Each Narrative looks like a cosmos alone, to any consciousness that partakes of it. The Geometers came from other Narratives—until they came here, and joined ours.

In the center of that open space, a bony woman in a threadbare garment was hunched over a dead plant. Sword of Divine Fire's reaction was succinct: Fuck! The woman cringed as if he'd hit her with a bullwhip. Then: What has happened to our potato?

How could a man become a god? Nell asked. By living in an extremely pragmatic society, said Constable Moore after some thought

If it's wearing red, yellow, or both, it's a lama," he said. "Bow to it." "Isn't that a camel from South America?

Modern people are calibrated for a whole different level of danger acceptance.

This is one of the most important moments in your life. Nothing will ever be the same. We might get rich. We might get killed. We might just have an adventure or lean something. But we have been changed. We are standing close the Heraclitean fire, feeling its heat on our faces.

Julia Bliss Flaherty, as Ivy now realized, was of the same stripe. Pinned down and obliged to justify herself, she would explain her actions in terms of some altruistic plan. And she might even believe it. But it wasn't that at all. She was like Ivy's grandmother. If you paid fealty to her, she would favor you, and your reputation and power would grow among all the others who did likewise.

It's, like, one of them drug dealer boats, Vic says, looking through his magic site. Five guys on it. Headed our way. He fires another round. Correction. Four guys on it. Boom. Correction, they're not headed our way anymore. Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. Correction. No boat.

For members of the general public might not care about Wolf-Rayet stars in the Quintuplet Cluster, but they definitely saw why having hot rocks fall on one's head was a good thing to avoid.

All duty is inconvenient to a greater or lesser degree, or it would not be duty.

He was neither dead nor here, but in Idaho, a state often confused, by bicoastal folks, with Iowa, but that in fact was the anti-Iowa in many respects, a place that Iowans would only go to in order to make some kind of statement.

The only reason no one ever did it with humans is because it seemed ethically dodgy, as well as completely unnecessary given the willingness of men to impregnate women every chance they got.

Reality is what we make it. Or what is made for us by the companies we keep. It is our clay from which we fashion ourselves.

The tragedy—and the entire point—of being a parent was the moment when the story stopped being about you.

This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world.

We had these throwbacks who would do stuff like printing their emails out on paper to read them, or asking you for your goddamn fax number two decades after you had thrown away your fax machine.

Debbie insisted on following the rhythm of the waves. Typical duck-squeezer sex: slow, frustrating, in-tune with nature.

He was forty-seven years old but in dim light could have passed for thirty.

so efficient it doesn't waste power by making noise

From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything

Magical? Non. Magnificent? Don't be absurd. Less bleak than anything else we have seen? Now truly you are speaking French, the ambassador said approvingly.

Readers of this memo will be disappointed to know that Bong-Bong Gad (sic), designer/owner/driver/proprietor of the vehicle, anticipated the inevitable there but for THE GRACE OF GOD go I witticism by unloading same on Yours Truly while we were still shaking hands (Filipinos go in for long handshakes, and the first party to initiate termination of a handshake—usually the non-Filipino—is invariably left with a nagging feeling that he is a shithead)

At the entrance of this street, a Janissary was pinned to a wooden door by an eight-foot-long spear, which Jack looked on as proving that Yevgeny had passed by there recently.