Quotes from Neal Stephenson

The hour of noon has passed,' said Judge Fang. 'Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.

What are letters?" "Kinda like mediaglyphics except they're all black, and they're tiny, they don't move, they're old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use 'em to make short words for long words.

They wanted to carry her, but she jumped to the stones of the plaza and strode away from the building, toward her ranks, which parted to make way for her. The streets of Pudong were filled with hungry and terrified refugees, and through them, in simple peasant clothes streaked with the blood of herself and of others, broken shackles dangling from her wrists, followed by her generals and ministers, walked the barbarian Princess with her book and her sword.

The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it.

But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people in the world all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost—swallowed up in the ocean—unless you are doing it along with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward.

In a manner familiar to anyone who had ever packed a car for a family trip, genial confusion gave way to impatience, then furious ultimatums, then ill-advised snap decisions.

Apparently the part of the brain that identified things as funny kept running as a background process even when its contributions were useless.

If money is a science, then it is a dark science...it has gone on developing...by its own rules

Bud's relationship with the female sex was governed by a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged theories, overheard scraps of conversation, half-remembered pieces of bad advice, and fragments of no-doubt exaggerated anecdotes that amounted to rank superstition.

you should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake' ...

All the people saying mean things about me on the Internet are gonna be dead in four hundred and thirty-three days," she said, deadpan.

You should be a billionaire, Randy. Thank god you're not. Why do you say that? Oh, because then you'd be a highly intelligent man who never has to make difficult choices - who never has to exert his mind. It is a state much worse than being a moron.

Leibniz is at the disadvantage of not having seen it. Or perhaps we should count this as an advantage, for anyone who sees it is dumbfounded by the brilliance of the geometry, and it is difficult to criticize a man's work when you are down on your knees shielding your eyes.

Hiro is a talented drifter. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. But in the bleak light of full adulthood, which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night, he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed.

He parks in the far corner of the lot, explaining that it is more logical to do this and then walk for fifteen seconds than it is to spend fifteen minutes looking for a closer space.

It appeared that way, Lawrence, but this raised the question of was mathematics really true or was it just a game played with symbols? In other words—are we discovering Truth, or just wanking?

the federal government needs to be scaled back to a size where he can personally stomp it to death with steel-toed boots.

Kids need to get answers from humans who love them.

It had been a hell of a long time since he had been reduced to hiding behind a tree, and he did not view it as much of a professional achievement.

Computers rely on the one and the zero to represent all things. This distinction between something and nothing—this pivotal separation between being and nonbeing—is quite fundamental and underlies many Creation myths.

She's not afraid. She's wearing a dentata.

How long do you want these messages to remain secret?[...] +I want them to remain secret for as long as men are capable of evil.

A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.

Unfortunately, this category of secret is itself so secret that it's very existance is secret, and he can't actually reveal it to anyone.