Quotes from Neal Stephenson

As the saying goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Reader

Randy does a sorting procedure on the diving books now: he ignores anything that has color photographs, or that appears to have been published within the last twenty years, or that has any quotes on the back cover containing the words stunning, superb, user-friendly, or, worst of all, easy-to-understand.

One of my professors has interesting things to say about the similarity between the way organ pipes are controlled by keys and stops, and the way random-access memory bits are read by computers.

D-d-d-dollars." "That's a silly name for money, Jack—no one'll ever take you seriously, talking that way.

KETCH, JACK: Name given to executioners.

The qualifications for being a Scout seemed to be a shocking level of physical endurance, a complete disregard for mortal danger, and some knowledge of how to exist in a space suit. All of them were Russian. There

To the Equity Lords, the idea had been worth billions; to Hackworth, another week's paycheck. That was the difference between the classes, right there.

Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy—but what kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself.

Another wonderful product from our sneaky little Jap friends." Intense movement and color blossomed on all six of the monitors. This crack about the Japanese

Classics-based sci-fi is nothing new. To name the most recent of many examples, the novelist Dan Simmons published "Ilium" and "Olympos," science-fictional takes on Homer. When

At the tables: a solitary general contractor rolling messages on his phone. Truckers, great of beard, wide of suspender, and huge of belly, looking around and BSing.

vehicles were as likely to move about on legs as wheels, so no one really cared about bumps in pavement. Modern utilities ran underground. Even had those things not been the case, the tax base wasn't there to support all those arborists and pavers. So the trees—all of them deciduous imports from the East Coast or Europe—had been doing as they pleased for decades. And what

Fighting isn't about knowing how, it's about deciding to.

Ammonia worked better, but it was dangerous, and you couldn't easily get more of it in space. If the Cloud Ark survived, it would survive on a water-based economy. A hundred years from now everything in space would be cooled by circulating water systems. But for now they had to keep the ammonia-based equipment running as well. Further

The ability of our consciousness to see—not just as a speelycaptor sees (by taking in and recording givens) but identifying things—copper bowls, melodies, faces, beauty, ideas—and making these things available to cognition—that ability, Atamant said, is the ultimate basis of all rational thought.

But it's easy to find the whole environment a little creepy, because something is missing: the translation of all its content into clear explicit written words, the attribution of the ideas to specific people.

She smelled good: not an easy thing to accomplish in 1714.

The covers are rugged hand-laid paper of rice chaff, bamboo tailings, free-range hemp, and crystalline glacial meltwater made by wizened artisans operating out of a mist-shrouded temple hewn from living volcanic rock on some island known only to aerobically gifted, Spandex-sheathed Left Coast travel bores. An

In retrospect, the Internet had been a revolution in human affairs, but one that had taken place just slowly enough that those who'd lived through it had had time to adjust in modest increments. But, centuries from now, people—if there were any—would see it as having happened in the blink of an eye.

The Pudgelys and the Pinkhearts and the Roundasses are all staring at her, slackjawed. She has just enough residual energy to swing into their driveway. Her momentum carries her to the top. She stops next to Mr. Pudgely's Acura and Mrs. Pudgely's bimbo box and steps off her plank. The spokes, noting her departure, even themselves out, plant themselves on the top of the driveway, refuse to roll backward. A

They are running a secure operating system you've never heard of," he explained. "It's called Shiny Hat." "Shiny Hat." "Yes. The most clinically paranoid operating system in the world. Since you have an overdeveloped sense of irony, Stokes, you might like to know that we acquired it from hackers who were specifically worried about being eavesdropped on by shadowy government entities. Now they work for us.

He went back to the search box and typed "Eutropians." A memory from the early days of the Internet, the 1990s tech boom.

My hand has stopped writing There is no talk in my mouth.

She's in shock. Keep her head low and her legs high