Quotes from Neal Stephenson

Consciousness, he wrote, is non-spatiotemporal in nature. But it becomes involved with the spatiotemporal world when conscious beings react to their own cognitions and make efforts to communicate with other conscious beings—something that they can only do by involving their spatiotemporal bodies.

Like a handful of nickels in a batch of bread dough this could be kneaded from place to place but never removed.

My eyes skimmed over the legalese and bureaucratese (two languages I had never mastered), until I found something descriptive to

Hiro is just a starving CIC stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It by the airport. But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun.

I'll handle the money." "But we have no money." "That is why you need someone to handle it.

Captain considered it, and shrugged. It seems right, he said. It is not precisely what El wanted; but enthroned as he is in his Palace, viewing the Land from a high seat, he does not see its complexity. This Land was made wrong. All of his efforts to make it right only spread the wrongness about it new ways. It is left to souls like me to decide what to do about it; and though I cannot see all the answers, I can guess that adding more wrongness will not help matters.

Carl Hollywood was appalled to realize that the only thing now standing between them and their three-decade march to the banks of the Huang Pu was Carl Hollywood, his .44, and a handful of lightly armed civilians.

tales; Kim had heard them all, several times over. They were nothing he hadn't heard before when Onghwe had set up his Circus in other cities. He started to walk toward

Some things by their nature cannot be mapped.

Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: "geeking out" and "vegging out." To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal—and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means.

And you would like me to get mixed up in this somehow?

parents of small children must perforce have an entirely different sense of irony than unimpaired humankind.

He strove to integrate us," said Eve, "but he, or we, failed. We are ineluctably children of the Beta Gods.

These women stared out from the canvases with arched brows, enormous eyes and tiny mouths, seeing much, and saying little.

The user interface is so easy to use, I can't do anything.

Shit, if I took time out to have an opinion about everything, I wouldn't get any work done

But one of the responsibilities of leadership is to mask one's own fears, to project confidence at all times.

We've missed you, Jack," she said, "where've you been?" "Running an errand—meeting some locals—partaking of their rich traditions," Jack said. "Can we get out of Germany now, please?

So she spends until about eleven A.M. reading, re-reading, and understanding the new changes in the Project. There are many of these, because this is a Monday morning and Marietta and her higher-ups spent the whole weekend closeted on the top floor, having a

On the social front it was a question of Amistics, which was a term that had been coined ages ago by a Moiran anthropologist to talk about the choices that different cultures made as to which technologies they would, and would not, make part of their lives. The word went all the way back to the Amish people of pre-Zero America, who had chosen to use certain modern technologies, such as roller skates, but not others, such as internal combustion engines. All cultures

Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game

Wealth that is stored up in gold is dead. It rots and stinks. True wealth is made every day by men getting up out of bed and going to work. By schoolchildren doing their lessons, improving their minds. Tell

You got this ship for free!?" "Damn all Puritans and their base obsession with how much it costs!" Roger bellowed, shaking a tiny drumstick at Daniel's brow as if it were the club of Hercules.

This Snow Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?