Quotes from Neal Stephenson

his first instinct with things that troubled him was to wall them off, and then wait for them to grow bad enough to threaten the structural integrity of the wall, and then, finally, to get out a sledgehammer.

Most men would rather be shot through with a broad-headed arrow than be described by you." Eliza could not help laughing.

Indeed, cousine, I should rather you were a sincere Satanist than a pretend one; for the former recognizes God's majesty, and may be reformed, while the latter is an atheist, and doomed to the Lake of Fire.

He was already thinking about the videos he was going to make to teach his baby about calculus when he climaxed. DINAH

Il mondo moderno è un disastro per chi si diletta a scrivere haiku: quante sillabe ci sono in «generatore elettrico»? Nove? Non ci starebbe neanche nel secondo verso.

But at first the market will be dominated by ignorant ninehammers who'll foolishly assume that King James will prevail—and that he will be ever so annoyed at the Dutch for having allowed their territory to serve as spring-board for an invasion of his country.

You know, now, the decision I made. Which was to suffer for the greater good. Because society will go astray if there are not those who, like me, imagine many outcomes. Let those scenarios run rampant in their minds. Anticipate the worst that could happen. Take steps to prevent it. If the price of that—the price of having a head full of dark imaginings—is personal suffering, then so be it.

Sometimes, she worries about her mother, then she hardens her heart and thinks maybe the whole thing will be good for her. Shake her up a little. Which is what she needs. After Dad left, she just folded up into herself like an origami bird thrown into a fire. There

He finds a ramp that leads down to the beach and lets gravity draw him towards sea level, gazing to the south and west. The water is pacific and colorless beneath a hazy sky, the horizon line is barely discernable.

Comstock glances beadily at his wire recorders, makes sure those reels are spinning. He is a little unnerved by how rapidly Waterhouse is coming up to speed. But one of the responsibilities of leadership is to mask one's own fears, to project confidence at all times.

Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy.

He has passed into the realm of irrational things that you must simply accept, and in the Philippines this is a nearly infinite domain

Le persone che aveva consultato gli avevano unanimemente risposto che la matematica, come il restauro degli organi a canne, era sì una bella cosa, ma che a un certo punto bisognava pur trovare un lavoro che desse da mangiare.

A man is talking on the phone in Cantonese, which means that he is, in fact, shouting.

Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process.

The Sadducees were materialists." "Meaning what? They drove BMWs?

Avi thinks this over before issuing the carefully engineered statement: "It is as true as it ever was.

Many set themselves the aim of rescuing the indifferent and the lazy—and end up lost themselves. The flame within them gets dim with the passage of time. So, if you have the fire, run, since you

It is the truth," said Oda-sensei. "Sometimes the truth is flattering.

Your broker is a half-naked blue-and-orange crypto-anarchist?

She cuts between two veering, blaring, and screeching BMWs. BMW drivers take evasive action at the drop of a hat, emulating the drivers in the BMW advertisements—this is how they convince themselves they didn't get ripped off. She

The goal of all persons who had houses in those days was to possess the smallest number of pieces of furniture needed to sustain life, but to make them as large and heavy and dark as possible. Accordingly, Daniel and Drake ate their potatoes and herring on a table that had the size and weight of a medieval drawbridge.

Doob, who had raised three children to adulthood, had figured out a long time ago that any event largely organized by elementary school teachers was likely to come off extremely well from a logistical and crowd-control standpoint.

To shave off the beard (or any body hair) is to symbolically annihilate the (essentially specious) boundary separating Self from Other