Quotes from Neal Stephenson

I don't think a Drop Top can can reach an orbit this high, can it? Dinah asked. Sean's coming alone. It's some kind of special one-passenger model -- the extra mass is being used for propellant. And then what? He just goes to an airlock and knocks on the door? Basically, yes, Larz said. What will they do? Tell him to go away?

Grammar is like the walls and bumpers of a pinball machine. Rhetoric is like the flippers of a pinball machine. You control the flippers. The rest of the machine—grammar—controls everything else. If you use the flippers well, you make points. If you fail to image your concepts viably, your ball drops into the black hole of nothingness. If you try to cheat, the machine tilts and you lose—that's like people not understanding your interactions.

With any job, there's some creative work that needs to be done—new technology to be developed or whatever. Everything else—ninety-nine percent of it—is making deals, raising capital, going to meetings, marketing and sales. We call that stuff making license plates.

at this point in their lives, neither one of them is important enough to kill, kidnap, or interrogate.

In the old world, death had led to endless philosophical ruminations and spawned religions, but in Bitworld it led to one-star ratings from furious bereaved and threats of class-action lawsuits.

At first the protesters gave him mean looks for driving a huge gas-guzzling dually until they saw through the glass that he was a person of color and then they didn't know where to direct their moral indignation.

until recently, he had been sustaining a fairly credible cover story about being a peaceful wine merchant in Cradle.

before that three-hundred-year run when there was a way for people to agree on facts—we had kings and warlords and rigid social hierarchy. During it, a lot of brainpower got unlocked and things got a lot better materially. A lot better. Now we're back in a situation where the people who have the power and the money can get what they want by dictating what the mass of people ought to believe.

He is sure that this would elevate his stature beyond that of dull software boy.

Do you know what I'm saying, Shaftoe?" "Sir, no sir! But I do detect a strong odor of politics in the room now, sir!

Basically, anyone who reads the National Enquirer or watches pro wrestling on TV is easy to convert.

Now, if you—the ingenious Dr. Leibniz—contrive a machine that gives the impression of thinking—is it really thinking, or merely reflecting your genius?" "You could as well have asked: are we thinking? Or merely reflecting God's genius?

If you are that much of a control freak, what sexual preferences does that translate into?" "I hope I'll never know. I suppose you would want to dominate a woman." "Wrong!" Avi said. "Sex is more complicated than that, Randy.

protects like a stack of telephone books.

He perfectly fits the profile of a Hut 8 man, who need not know anything except pure math.

Music, like violence, crossed all languages. These were the oldest and most complete ways of communicating that people possessed.

Empty boxes, old newspapers, a milk jug, and a wine bottle." "You're identifying the contents of the garbage bag?" "No dead cats. Or live ones." "Maybe it's a Schrödinger's Hefty bag." I

I have spent enough time around Puritans in general, and Boston Puritans in particular, to know what these people will tell her: lock up the library! Or

You heard of Mary Jane?" Root asks. Shaftoe—role model, leader of men—stifles the impulse to say, Heard of her? I've fucked her!

This, and the owl, told all. It was as he had feared. Birds and bugs, top to bottom, front to back. All salvaged, not because they had innate value, but because they'd been given to the Royal Society by important people. They'd been kept here just as a young couple keeps the ugly wedding present from the rich aunt.

bimbo boxes with license plates from all the Burbclaves.

he had a Boston accent that could scrape the rust from a manhole cover.

What awaited them there could only be guessed at, but for Ariane it was probably going to be a substantial reward, a medal, and a promotion to some high rank in Red's military intelligence branch.

He is no longer connected to the network by a fiber-optic cable, and so all his communication with the outside world has to take place via radio waves