Quotes About Neal Stephenson

But I have to warn you that this is the word—'politics'—that nerds use whenever they feel impatient about the human realities of an organization.

All the people saying mean things about me on the Internet are gonna be dead in four hundred and thirty-three days," she said, deadpan.

It had been a hell of a long time since he had been reduced to hiding behind a tree, and he did not view it as much of a professional achievement.

Princess Nell had to reconstruct them, learning the language, which was extremely pithy and made heavy use of parentheses.

The Fourth Crusade was an epic clusterfuck a comic-opera misadventure a tragic saga with farcical elements.

Maybe this was all down to some supernatural effect, such as grace, that flowed through people's lives even if they didn't understand why.

The meeting would later be known as the Council of the Seven Eves.

His job on TV was to explain science to the general public and, as such, to act as a lightning for people who could not accept all the things that science implied about their worldview and their way of life, and who showed a kind of harebrained ingenuity in finding ways to refute it.

Debbie insisted on following the rhythm of the waves. Typical duck-squeezer sex: slow, frustrating, in-tune with nature.

Magical? Non. Magnificent? Don't be absurd. Less bleak than anything else we have seen? Now truly you are speaking French, the ambassador said approvingly.

SF does possess at least two of the classic markers of genrehood, namely intellectual disreputability and moral salaciousness. SF thrives because it is idea porn.

Even though we didn't say anything, we were in dialog: a peregrin dialog, meaning two equals wandering around trying to work something out, as opposed to a suvinian dialog where a fid is being taught by a mentor, or a Periklynian dialog, which is combat.

My colleague Bruce Sterling has defined a thriller as a science fiction novel that includes the President of the United States.

There is an English expression: 'high-maintenance girlfriend,' Csongor remarked. Now, of course, Zula is not my girlfriend. Probably never would be, even if all this shit were not happening. And I think that if she were my girlfriend? She would not be high maintenance at all! She is just not that type of girl. However. Because of circumstances, today she is the most high-maintenance girlfriend since Cleopatra.

every pirate and privateer has lurking within him the soul of an accountant. Though some would say 'tis the other way round.

His real job—the job that the Owners paid him for—was to be an observer of the human condition as it was so richly displayed from day to day within these walls.

I locked him out of the reticule," Esma said. "He was speaking incoherently of cheese.

Orolo said, "What if these two universes—each as big and as old and as complicated as ours—were entirely separate, except for a single photon that managed to travel somehow between them. Would that be enough to wrench A's time and B's time into perfect lockstep for all eternity?

That quieted her down a little bit. But after a while, she said: "Do you need transportation? Tools? Stuff?" "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.

He arouses violent controversy among a loose flock of chickens that is straggling across his path, none of whom can seem to figure out how to get out of his way; they're scared of him, but not mentally organized enough to translate that fear into a coherent plan of action.

But Raz, you are educable, you can learn 'this kind of thing,' if by that you mean how to maneuver an S2-35B and how to assemble a Cold Black Mirror. You've spent your whole life, ever since you were Collected, becoming educable.

its speedometer. But the bamboo grove in Bobby Shaftoe's haiku has not been added just to put a little Oriental flavor into the poem and wow the folks back home in Oconomowoc.

Well, 'vacuum with a sparse dusting of probability waves' is an accurate description of just about everything in the universe

And then there's The Enforcers—but they cost a lot and don't take well to supervision. It is rumored that, under their uniforms, they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick, emblazoned with the words SUE ME.