Quotes from Neal Stephenson

To condense fact from the vapor of nuance." Condense fact from the vapor of nuance. Hiro has never forgotten the sound of her speaking those words, the feeling that came over him as he realized for the first time how smart Juanita was.

She in turn introduced Jules to the other members of her group, including Fenna, who smiled at Jules with a light in her eyes that made Saskia wonder if they'd somehow crossed paths with each other in the past and were old friends. But that wasn't it. They were new friends. They stuck to each other like magnets that have been brought too close together. They ceased to be aware of the existence of other humans.

Defeating the Nazis was in the same category as changing a flat tire: an untidy business that men were expected to know how to do. And not just the men of yore, the supermen of her generation; Randy was expected to know about these things too. If the Axis reconstituted itself tomorrow, Grandma would expect Randy to be suited up behind the controls of a supersonic fighter plane the day after that.

But because people could be so beautiful it was hard not to think that there was something of people that came from the other world

But as time went by, and I thought about it harder, the real nature of the thing became clear: I had made a mess inside of someone else's soul at a moment when that soul had been open to me. Now it was closed. I was the only one who could clean up the mess; but in order to do this I first had to get in there. And I had no idea how, especially in the case of someone

It might interest you to know that our state is tired of being used as a chemical toilet so that people in Utah can have plastic lawn furniture.

Doob had known for a while that he was not the easiest guy to be related to. During his last ten weeks on Earth, however, he sometimes feared he was pushing his family's patience beyond human limits with his lust for camping.

And now does noble Tristan, Charlemagne's new paladin, Clap hand on oar and calling upon Our Lady's virtues

Paganism? Then we are all pagans! It is a symbol of Mercury—patron of commerce—who has been worshipped in this cellar—and in this city—for a thousand years, by Bishops as well as business-men. It is a cult that adapts itself to any religion, just as easily as quicksilver adopts the shape of any container—

Unix has always lurked provocatively in the background of the operating system wars, like the Russian Army. Most people know it only by reputation, and its reputation, as the Dilbert cartoon suggests, is mixed. But everyone seems to agree that if it could only get its act together and stop surrendering vast tracts of rich agricultural land and hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war to the onrushing invaders, it could stomp them (and all other opposition) flat.

You know what a fact is? That's something that has nothing to do with politics.

The Comanches were originally Shoshones who had come down out of the north speaking a language that, of course, had no word for "pig." When they had encountered this alien species in what was now Texas, they'd had to invent a new term for them. The term was muubi pooro. Different bands of Comanches pronounced it in slightly different ways. The first of those words meant "nose" and the second meant something like a "tool" or a "weapon.

When Hiro learned how to do this, way back fifteen years ago, a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself. Now, that's no longer possible. Software comes out of factories, and hackers are, to a greater or lesser extent, assembly-line workers. Worse yet, they may become managers who never get to write any code themselves.

So the bioweapon narrative was easy to quash, at least if you were among the small minority of Miasma users who actually cared about logic and evidence.

The Walmart was like a starship that had landed in the soybean fields.

A hybrid of unusual size

Gold is where you find it.

He is flitting and hopping about in the lobby like a sparrow whose nest had just been blown down in a windstorm.

Then he remembers that he is not just some interloper. He is a shareholder, and an important officer, in the corporation that employs them—he is paying them or oppressing them, take your pick.

into a fake argument. The other side, facing the user, was a list of little reminders as to what was really going on: Speech is aggression Every utterance has a winner and a loser Curiosity is feigned Lying is performative Stupidity is power

I just about got this planet all sewn up." Rife delivers this line with an incredibly sardonic and contemptuous twang, the exaggerated accent of a cowboy who suspects that some Yankee pencilneck is looking down his nose at him.

The boring bits gave Daniel some leisure to ponder the quite peculiar family curse he seemed to be living under, namely, this marked tendency to be present at the demise of English Kings.

Are you really going to ask them?!" Sonar exclaimed. "Nah. As an ancient saying has it, it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

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.