Quotes from Neal Stephenson

It's magnificent to me," Daniel said. He was sincere—not trying to be a Flattering Parasite or Crafty Knave. But Hooke only became irritated. "I tell you again. True beauty is to be found in natural forms. The more we magnify, and the closer we examine, the works of Artifice, the grosser and stupider they seem. But if we magnify the natural world it only becomes more intricate and excellent.

What the hell was I going to do with a rabid animal welded to a tree stump?

Ten years ago I might have been offended, Daniel said. Now, there's nothing I'll not believe.

a culture medium for a medium culture.

Sometimes it was better to say nothing than to fill a void badly.

Waterhouse is going to fix the church's organ. This project will be sure to have side benefits for his own organ, a single-pipe instrument that needs attention just as badly.

But this probably saved my father's parents' lives, for, in all the lands controlled by Spain and Portugal, the Inquisition went on a rampage after that. Instead of being roasted alive in some Portuguese auto da fé, my father's parents moved to New Amsterdam and worked for the Dutch West India Company in the slave trade, which was all they knew how to do.

extremely dangerous drug-related occupations for which decoy served as a paid audition of sorts. A start weapons system was a wise investment. The

Entire sections of them simply cannot be translated—the characters are legible and well-known, but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modern mind." "Like instructions for programming a VCR.

Fenris was a giant wolf of Norse mythology who, it was prophesied, would return one day to fuck everything up, and such were the ground rules of that mythos that there was nothing the gods could do about it).

promiscuous reference frames.

Forty-eight hours of intensive grandniece/great-uncle bonding had ensued. In that short time Sophia's apparatus of modern kiddom had permeated Richard's apartment. Even if she never again set foot in this place, he would be finding Cheerios, glitter, sticky handprints, and barrettes for the next twenty years.

He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him, and confused by the fact that he cared so deeply about her opinion. And she, maybe, was beginning to think that if Hiro was so convinced in his own mind that he was unworthy of her, maybe he knew something she didn't. Hiro

It is what you don't expect," he'd said, "that most needs looking for." "Do

ENOCH ROUNDS THE CORNER JUST as the executioner raises the noose above the woman's head.

Daniel kept being cruel to Roger, trying to make him go away, but Roger took it as honesty, implying profound friendship.

Almost as miraculous as life itself was the number of ways it could end, or at least turn into a living hell.

What they conceal tells you more than what they reveal.

Like two arms of a snowflake, Mind and Matter grew out of a common center—and even though they grew independently and without communicating—each developing according to its own internal rules—nevertheless they grew in perfect harmony, and share the same shape and structure.

vast U-shaped valley that was ground out of the rock, a long time ago, by a big tongue of ice in an epochal period of geological cunnilingus.

The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder—its DNA—xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines.

Clarity of mind (Cm) is affected by any number of factors, but by far the most important is horniness, which might be designated by ?, for obvious anatomical reasons that Waterhouse finds amusing at this stage of his emotional development.

he's surprised your tits come wi' a head attached

Of course, happy is a concept for fat Americans. Immigrants don't seem to care about happy very much. Healthy, wealthy and wise, yes, but happiness alone is something their children worry about, maybe.