Neal Stephenson Quotes:

A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.

Topics: Clutter, Basements, Universe

Whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.

Topics: Real, People, Needs, Protocol, Things Done

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest ***** in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

source: - "Snow Crash". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1992.

Topics: Art, Revenge, Real, Wiping Out, Being Bad

Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.

Topics: Christian, Atheist, Intelligent

Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.

Topics: Talent, Ability

When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.20, Spectra

Topics: Wrestling, Men, Winning

Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.

source: - "Cryptonomicon". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1999.

Topics: Games, Self, Years, Sixteen Year Olds, Free Time

Boredom is a mask frustration wears.

Topics: Frustration, Boredom, Mask

For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.

Topics: Oxygen, Atmosphere, Trying, Methane, Nitrogen

Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.

Topics: Sound, Noise, Barriers

See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places,

source: - Neal Stephenson (1993). “Snow Crash”, Spectra

Topics: Powerful, World

To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.

Topics: Facts, Nuance, Vapor

Gold is the corpse of value...

Topics: Gold, Values

... you should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake' ...

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.73, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Believe, Rakes, Should

Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?

Topics: Differences, Snow, Waiting

Most Kabbalists were theorists who were interested only in pure meditation. But there were so-called 'practical Kabbalists' who tried to apply the power of the Kabbalah in everyday life.

Topics: Meditation, Everyday, Kabbalah, Theorists

Am I a technocrat? Im just a guy who went down to the bookstore and bought a couple of textbooks on TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocol of the Internet, and read them. And then I signed on to a computer, which anyone can do nowadays, and I messed around with it for a few years, and now I know all about it. Does that make me a technocrat?

Topics: Couple, Years, Guy

Like any place in Reality, the Street is subject to development. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. They can build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light shows and special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored.

Topics: Reality, Light, Special, Spacetime

I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor.

Topics: Use, Might, Processors

That's funny because if anyone actually did prove the existence of God we'd just tell him 'nice proof, Fraa Bly' and start believing in God.

Topics: Nice, Believe, Proof

It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out the equations that govern their movement; it is boring to use those principles to design electric can openers. From here on out, it's all can openers.

Topics: Design, Use, Movement

Two tires fly. Two Wail. A bamboo grove, all chopped down From it, warring songs.

Topics: Song, Two, Bamboo

Jad said, "The leakage was forcing choices, the making of which in no way improved matters." Okay. So we were, in effect, locked in a room with a madman sorcerer. That clarified things a little.

Topics: Choices, Littles, Matter, Leakage

Hiro watches the large, radioactive, spear-throwing killer drug lord ride his motorcycle into Chinatown. Which is the same as riding it into China, as far as chasing him down is concerned.

Topics: Drug, Motorcycle, Watches, Chinatown

Interesting things happen along borders - transitions - not in the middle where everything is the same.

source: - Neal Stephenson (1993). “Snow Crash”, Spectra

Topics: Interesting, Transition, Borders

Once a person has all the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment.

Topics: Needs, Entertainment, Persons

Any property that's open to common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2007). “Zodiac”, p.68, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: Max, Use, Incentives

The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.283, Spectra

Topics: Stupid, Intelligent, Differences, Subtlety, Well Educated

Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.74, Spectra

Topics: Looks, Noise, Information

Most of the brain's work is done while the brain's owner is ostensibly thinking about something else, so sometimes you have to deliberately find something else to think and talk about.

source: - "Cryptonomicon". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1999.

Topics: Thinking, Brain, Done

We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.

source: - "Snow Crash". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1992.

Topics: Smart, Urban Legends, Self, Mass Hysteria, Viral

Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.65, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Important, And Love, Defense

There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.2, Spectra

Topics: Four, Speed, Software

It is what you don't expect... that most needs looking for.

Topics: Needs

And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.298, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Two, Alternatives, Compromise

That to me is the basic message of events like the rise of Nazism, the Salem witch trials, and so on: not that bad people do bad things, but that good people do bad things.

source: - "Neal Stephenson Speaks about His Latest Epic: 'Seveneves'". Interview With Adrian Liang, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 21, 2015.

Topics: Witch Trials, People, Events, Salem, Salem Witch Trials

The full cosmos consists of the physical stuff and consciousness. Take away consciousness and it's only dust; add consciousness and you get things, ideas, and time.

Topics: Dust, Ideas, Add

One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for may people, is not that he's socially inept - because everybody's been there - but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2012). “Cryptonomicon”, p.646, Random House

Topics: People, Scary, Nerd

The story is everything, so it always begins with a story. Research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Writing, Interesting, Too Much, Scaffolding

Wired people should know something about wires.

Topics: People, Wire, Should

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.283, Spectra

Topics: Stupid, Intelligent, Differences

Even the best of us have certain psychological mechanisms that can suddenly kick in and turn us into monsters. That to me is the basic message of events like the rise of Nazism, the Salem witch trials, and so on: not that bad people do bad things, but that good people do bad things. It's distressingly easy for those mechanisms to be triggered, either consciously by demagogues, or naively by people who think they're trying to do the right thing. Which is why I think it's more akin to tic-tac-toe.

source: - Source: www.omnivoracious.com

Topics: Thinking, Witch Trials, People, Tics, Tic Tacs

All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.201, Spectra

Topics: Cells, People, Brain, Latches, Brain Cells

Software development, like professional sports, has a way of making thirty-year-old men feel decrepit.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.56, Spectra

Topics: Sports, Men, Years, Professional Sports, Software Development

Men who believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time.

Topics: Believe, Men, Different, Accomplishing Something

I feel that I am entitled to trample all other considerations into the dirt in my pursuit of a satisfying pun.

source: - Neal Stephenson (1994). “Snow Crash”, p.481, Penguin UK

Topics: Dirt, Consideration, Pursuit

They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.64, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Ideas, Made, Certain

Most of my colleagues go on backpacking trips when they have to do some thinking. I go to a good hardware store and head for the oiliest, dustiest corners... If they're really good, they don't hassle me. They let me wander around and think. Young hardware clerks have a lot of hubris. They think they can help you find anything... Old hardware clerks have learned the hard way that nothing in a hardware store ever gets bought for its nominal purpose. You buy something that was designed to do one thing, and you use it for another.

source: - "Zodiac: An Eco-Thriller". Book by Neal Stephenson, May 1988.

Topics: Thinking, Clerks, Use, Hassle, Hard Way

Technically, of course, he was right. Socially, he was annoying us.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.124, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Annoying, Courses

The only thing that can effect a big change in personality is something that physically rewires the brain and/or alters the body's chemical milieu.

source: - "Neal Stephenson Speaks about His Latest Epic: 'Seveneves'". Interview With Adrian Liang, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 21, 2015.

Topics: Personality, Brain, Body, Milieu, Big Changes

When I read a novel that I really like, I feel as if I am in direct, personal communication with the author. I feel as if the author and I are on the same wavelength mentally, that we have a lot in common with each other, and that we could have an interesting conversation, or even a friendship, if the circumstances permitted it. When the novel comes to an end, I feel a certain letdown, a loss of contact. It is natural to want to recapture that feeling by reading other works by the same author, or by corresponding with him/her directly.

Topics: Reading, Communication, Loss, Interesting Conversation, Wavelength

The best way to know someone is to have a conversation with them.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2012). “Cryptonomicon”, p.382, Random House

Topics: Way, Conversation, Best Way

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallow subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.1, Spectra

Topics: Book, Night, Light, Extremity, Perspiration

Let's set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2009). “Cryptonomicon”, p.5, Harper Collins

Topics: Mean, Self, Issues

Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2011). “Reamde”, p.313, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Dirty, Knives, Two, Dirty Water, Two Ways

He had some measure of the infuriating trait that causes a young man to be a nonconformist for its own sake and found that the surest way to shock most people, in those days, was to believe that some kinds of behavior were bad and others good, and that it was reasonable to live one's life accordingly.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.20, Spectra

Topics: Believe, Men, People, Nonconformist, Infuriating

Any strategy that involves crossing a valley accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.

source: - FaceBook post by Neal Stephenson from Oct 02, 2011

Topics: Distance, Loss, Valleys, Big Stuff

One of the problems, hanging out with me, is that I can turn any topic into a toxic horror story. I've lost two girlfriends and a job by reading an ingredients label out loud, with annotations, at the wrong time.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2007). “Zodiac”, p.10, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: Girlfriend, Jobs, Reading, Annotation

But then, Cap'n Crunch in a flake form would be suicidal madness; it would last about as long, when immersed in milk, as snowflakes sifting down into a deep fryer. No, the cereal engineers at General Mills had to find a shape that would minimize surface area, and, as some sort of compromise between the sphere that is dictated by Euclidean geometry and whatever sunken treasure related shapes that the cereal aestheticians were probably clamoring for, they came up with this hard-to-pin-down striated pillow formation.

source: - "Cryptonomicon". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1999.

Topics: Suicidal, Cereal, Long, Flakes, Sifting

What are letters?” “Kinda like mediaglyphics except they’re all black, and they’re tiny, they don’t move, they’re old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use ’em to make short words for long words.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.46, Spectra

Topics: Moving, Long, Black, All Black, Long Words

... when I saw any of those kinds of beauty I knew I was alive, and not just in the sense that when I hit my thumb with a hammer I knew I was alive, but rather in the sense that I was partaking of something--something was passing through me that it was in my nature to be a part of.

Topics: Hammers, Thumbs, Alive, Passing Through

It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.57, Spectra

Topics: Smart, Believe, Males, Techie

..this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way to get out of it is to quit, cut loose, take a flyer, and go off into the wicked world, where you will be swallowed up and never heard from again.

Topics: Stupid, Cutting, Order, Wicked World, Flyers

Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he'll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas "Fscking" Edison.

Topics: Shoes, Design, Looks, Massacres, Pair Of Shoes

Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.

Topics: Badass, Self, Numbers

Hostility towards Microsoft is not difficult to find on the Net, and it blends two strains: resentful people who feel Microsoft is too powerful, and disdainful people who think it's tacky. This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments. Microsoft is the very embodiment of modern high-tech prosperity - it is, in a word, bourgeois - and so it attracts all of the same gripes.

source: - "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line". Book by Neal Stephenson, November 9, 1999.

Topics: Powerful, Thinking, Two, Heyday, Communism And Socialism

Middle class prosperity is lapidary; the flow of cash rounds and smooths a person like water does riverbed stones.

Topics: Class, Water, Doe

She's not afraid. She's wearing a dentata.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.54, Spectra

Topics: Not Afraid

What's hard, in hacking as in fiction, is not writing, it's deciding what to write.

Topics: Writing, Fiction, Hacking

Of persons I will say this: it is difficult to tell when they are running aright but easy to see when something has gone awry.

Topics: Running, Gone, Easy

But they had, perversely, been living among people who were peering into the wrong end of the telescope, or something, and who had convinced themselves that the opposite was true - that the world had once been a splendid, orderly place...and that everything had been slowly, relentlessly falling apart ever since.

source: - "Quicksilver". Book by Neal Stephenson, September 23, 2003.

Topics: Fall, Opposites, People

Coming up with lectures is a huge amount of work. I was willing to do one lecture for Gresham because I was honored to have been invited, but to create lectures for a class would probably require that I shut down everything else and concentrate on lectures for a couple of years. Then there would be many, many other skills that I'd have to learn, such as how to sit through a faculty meeting, how to deal with students, etc. It is really not in the cards for me. It's not who I am or what I do. I'm a novelist.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Couple, Who I Am, Years

Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.118, Spectra

Topics: Country, Baby, Sight, Lumber, Having A Baby

Hiro is a talented drifter. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. But in the bleak light of full adulthood, which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night, he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.21, Spectra

Topics: Morning, Sunday, Night, Drifters, Sunday Morning

I think visual literacy and media literacy is not without value, but I think plain old-fashioned text literacy and mathematical literacy are much more powerful and flexible ways to organize your mind.

source: - "Pushing the Edge With 'Diamond Age' Nano-Machines". Interview with The Associated Press, May 10, 1995.

Topics: Powerful, Thinking, Media, Media Literacy

Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2009). “Cryptonomicon”, p.26, Harper Collins

Topics: Add, Saws, Idiot

Crappy old OSes have value in the basically negative sense that changing to new ones makes us wish we'd never been born.

Topics: Design, Wish, Negative

The imperative to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale no longer seems like the childish preoccupation of a few nerds with slide rulers - It's the only way for the human race to escape from its current predicaments - Too bad we've forgotten how to do it

source: - Neal Stephenson (2012). “Some Remarks”, p.241, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Inspirational, Technology, Race

Ares always reemerges from the chaos. It will never go away. Athenian civilization defends itself from the forces of Ares with metis, or technology. Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists' uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn't work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish.

Topics: Art, Technology, Civilization

It is the fate of operating systems to become free.

Topics: Fate, Operating Systems

So a lot of what you see in the Baroque Cycle is me wanting to be one of those guys. In the case of Anathem, I needed something that was more formal, less flashy, as if it had been translated from the classical language of another planet, but enlivened with slang terms that a teenage narrator would enjoy throwing around.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Teenage, Guy, Narrators, Slang, Flashy

Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.6, Spectra

Topics: California, Southern, Bustle, Southern California

The science fiction approach doesn't mean it's always about the future; it's an awareness that this is different.

source: - Interview with Catherine Asaro, www.sfsite.com. September 1999.

Topics: Mean, Different, Fiction

If the item of stolen property had been anything other than a book, it would have been confiscated. But a book is different - it is not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and thence to a well-ordered society.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.163, Spectra

Topics: Book, Mind, Pathways

It is commonly the case with technologies that you can get the best insight about how they work by watching them fail.

Topics: Technology, Failing, Cases

I try to find a style that matches the book. In the Baroque Cycle, I got infected with the prose style of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, which is my favorite era. It's recent enough that it is easy to read - easier than Elizabethan English - but it's pre-Victorian and so doesn't have the pomposity that is often a problem with 19th-century English prose. It is earthy and direct and frequently hilarious.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Book, Style, Trying, 18th Century, Pomposity

This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2014). “The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World”, p.214, Harper Collins

Topics: Two, Mind, Labyrinth, Predestination

Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?' Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.356, Spectra

Topics: Simple, People, Way

This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2009). “Cryptonomicon”, p.97, Harper Collins

Topics: Faculty Members, People, Research, Grad

Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy... Because they were hypocrites, the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefarious conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none.

Topics: Hypocrite, Views, Hypocrisy, Despised, Political Discourse

Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?

source: - Neal Stephenson (2009). “In the Beginning...Was the Command Line”, p.11, Harper Collins

Topics: Buying, Wagons, Stations

I am on an expense account that would blow your mind.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.329, Spectra

Topics: Blow, Mind, Expenses

She looked at me like I was crazy. Most of my lovers do, and that's partly why they love me, and partly why they leave

Topics: Crazy, Lovers, My Lover

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 line 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.

source: - "Snow Crash". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1992.

Topics: Running, Dna, Growth, Xerox, Binders

If you sincerely believed in God, how could you form one thought, speak one sentence, without mentioning Him?

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.178, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Speak, Form, One Sentence

'It’s, like, one of them drug dealer boats,' Vic says, looking through his magic sight. 'Five guys on it. Headed our way.' He fires another round. 'Correction. Four guys on it.' Boom. 'Correction, they’re not headed our way anymore.' Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. 'Correction. No boat.'

source: - "Snow Crash". Book by Neal Stephenson, Chapter 51, 1992.

Topics: Ocean, Fire, Sight

So, you're worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.110, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Dragons, Nerves, Worried

Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.254, Spectra

Topics: Supposing That, Ordinary, Relation, Binary, Supposing

I don't even want you to nod, that's how much you annoy me. Just freeze and shut up.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.148, Spectra

Topics: Want, Shut Up, Annoying

In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not at a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity : Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.

Topics: Trying, Three, Looks

The sight of the bare katana inspires everyone to a practically Nipponese level of politeness

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.303, Spectra

Topics: Sight, Inspire, Levels

Unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history.

Topics: Unix, Operating Systems, Oral History

I just assume I'm not invisible. I assume I'm wearing fluorescent clothes, and there's a million-dollar bounty going to the first driver who manages to hit me. And I ride on that assumption.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2007). “Zodiac”, p.41, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: Clothes, Dollars, Firsts, Bounty

I actually don't think that there is a connection between the survival instinct and a hunger for immortality.

source: - "Neal Stephenson Speaks about His Latest Epic: 'Seveneves'". Interview With Adrian Liang, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 21, 2015.

Topics: Thinking, Survival, Connections, Survival Instinct

Clearly Mr. Drkh has had a long career of being the weirdest person in any given room, but he's about to go down in flames.

source: - "Cryptonomicon". Book by Neal Stephenson. Chapter 64: "Organ", 1999.

Topics: Flames, Careers, Long, Long Careers

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.144, Spectra

Topics: Hypocrisy, Republic, Virtue, Coastal

"Sorry," she said, "I got out as fast as I could, but I had to stay and socialize. Protocol, you know." "Explain protocol," Nell said. This was how she always talked to the Primer. "At the place we’re going, you need to watch your manners. Don’t say 'explain this' or 'explain that.'" "Would it impose on your time unduly to provide me with a concise explanation of the term protocol?" Nell said. Again Rita made that nervous laugh and looked at Nell with an expression that looked like poorly concealed alarm.

source: - "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer". Book by Neal Stephenson, February 1995.

Topics: Sorry, Expression, Laughing, Concealed, Concise

If you are a professional writer - i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed - Emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.

source: - "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line". Essay by Neal Stephenson, 1999.

Topics: Stars, Editing, Worry, Editing Software

As convenient as it is for information to come to us, libraries do have a valuable side effect: they force all of the smart people to come together in one place where they can interact with one another.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2012). “Some Remarks”, p.146, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Smart, People, Library, Side Effects, Convenient

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.191, Spectra

Topics: Doe, Moral, Code, Insincere, Moral Code

Part of being a sentient human is the ability to anticipate others' mental states - to say "Fred's going to hate this but Jane would love it."

source: - "Neal Stephenson Speaks about His Latest Epic: 'Seveneves'". Interview with Adrian Liang, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 21, 2015.

Topics: Hate, States, Ability

I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there." There might as well be, "Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.142, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Water, Together, Bombs

I was trying to run something to ground that had come to my attention when I was working on the Baroque Cycle. That series, of course, was about the conflict between Newton and Leibniz. Leibniz developed a system of metaphysics called monadology, which looked pretty weird at the time and was promptly buried by Newtonian-style physics.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Running, Style, Trying, Baroque

I really am just trying to tell stories. But stories are often grounded in larger events and themes. They don't have to be - there's a big literature of trailer-park, kitchen-table fiction that's just about goings-on in the lives of ordinary people - but my own tastes run toward stories that in addition to being good stories are set against a backdrop that is interesting to read and learn about.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Running, People, Interesting, Backdrop, Trailer Park

In the room where I work, I have a chalkboard, and as I'm going along, I write the made-up words on it. A few feet from that chalkboard is a copy of the full 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, to which I refer frequently as a source of ideas and word roots.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Writing, Roots, Feet, Chalkboards

Those who think through possible outcomes with discipline, forge connections, in so doing, to other cosmi in which those outcomes are more than mere possibilities. Such a consciousness is measurably, quantitatively different from one that has not undertaken the same work and so, yes, is able to make correct decisions in an Emergence where an untrained mind would be of little use.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.412, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Thinking, Discipline, Decision

I don't like sewing machines. I don't understand how a needle with a thread going through the tip of it can interlock the thread by jamming itself into a little goddamn spool. It's contrary to nature and it irritates me.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2007). “Zodiac”, p.74, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Topics: Machines, Littles, Thread

It is easy to look at these waves, accomplishing so little and to think that no matter what efforts we put forth in our lives, all we're really doing is rearranging the sand grains in a beach that in essence never changes.

source: - "Quicksilver". Book by Neal Stephenson, 2003.

Topics: Beach, Thinking, Essence, Rearranging

The mind knows...that there is an action principle that governs how the world evolves from one moment to the next - that restricts our world's path to points that tell an internally consistent story.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.112, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Our World, Mind, Next

This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the paper tape, and your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.

Topics: Html, Tape, World, Pithy, World Wide Web

A lot of secular, modern people claim to be disillusioned whenever they learn that any smart person is religious. That's applicable to Newton as it is to any other religious smart person

Topics: Religious, Smart, People, Smart Person

Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.172, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Bombs, Opponents, Aliens

...your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.

Topics: Design, Software, Software Design, Browsers

"The suspect had experienced a ballistic interlude earlier in the evening," Miss Pao said, "regrettably not filmed, and relieved himself of excess velocity by means of an ablative technique."

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.99, Spectra

Topics: Mean, Missing, Technique

They wanted to carry her, but she jumped to the stones of the plaza and strode away from the building, toward her ranks, which parted to make way for her. The streets of Pudong were filled with hungry and terrified refugees, and through them, in simple peasant clothes streaked with the blood of herself and of others, broken shackles dangling from her wrists, followed by her generals and ministers, walked the barbarian Princess with her book and her sword.

source: - Neal Stephenson (1998). “The Diamond Age”, p.468, Penguin UK

Topics: Book, Princess, Simple

The hour of noon has passed,' said Judge Fang. 'Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.102, Spectra

Topics: Kentucky, Judging, Noon, Fried Chicken

Give me an adventure. I'm not talking about some massive adventure. Just something that would make getting fired seem small. Something that I might remember when I'm old." "I can't predict the future," I said, "but based on what little I know so far, I'm afraid it has to be a massive adventure or nothing." "Great!" "Probably the kind of adventure that ends in a mass burial.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.172, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Adventure, Talking, Giving, Getting Fired, Remember When

[Emacs] is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful.

source: - "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line". Essay by Neal Stephenson, 1999.

Topics: Beautiful, Language, Computer, Lisp

Enoch...why are you here? Why has my spirit been incarnated into a physical bodi in this world generally? Or specifically, why am I here in a Swedish forest, standing on the wreck of a mysterious German rocket plane while a homosexual German sobs over the cremated remains of his Italian lover?

Topics: Italian, World, Wrecks

Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whisky, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2003). “The Diamond Age”, p.266, Spectra

Topics: Pain, Men, Irritation, Bagpipes

They went inside. The young ones shuffled to a stop as their ironic sensibilities, which served them in lieu of souls, were jammed by a signal of overwhelming power.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2011). “Reamde”, p.18, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Soul, Ironic, Signals, Young Ones

How could your cover be blown in Canada? Why even bother going dark there? How could you tell?

source: - Neal Stephenson (2011). “Reamde”, p.653, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Dark, Canada, Bother

The GPS unit became almost equally obstreperous, though, over Richard’s unauthorized route change, until they finally passed over some invisible cybernetic watershed between two possible ways of getting to their destination, and it changed its fickle little mind and began calmly telling him which way to proceed as if this had been its idea all along.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2011). “Reamde”, p.179, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Gps, Ideas, Two, Watersheds

Leibniz is at the disadvantage of not having seen it. Or perhaps we should count this as an advantage, for anyone who sees it is dumbfounded by the brilliance of the geometry, and it is difficult to criticize a man’s work when you are down on your knees shielding your eyes.

Topics: Eye, Men, Knees

Of course, the underlying structure of everything in England is posh. There is no in-between with these people. You have to walk a mile to find a telephone booth, but when you find it, it is built as if the senseless dynamiting of pay phones had been a serious problem at some time in the past. And a British mailbox can presumably stop a German tank.

source: - "Cryptonomicon". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1999.

Topics: Past, Phones, People, Mailboxes, Posh

An old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.

source: - Neal Stephenson (2010). “Anathem”, p.169, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Years, People, Gone

You don't want your readers seeing easy connections; it becomes a distraction.

source: - "Neal Stephenson Speaks about His Latest Epic: 'Seveneves'". Interview With Adrian Liang, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 21, 2015.

Topics: Want, Connections, Distraction

Having a persistent nature is part of being human. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to speak of knowing another person, or loving them, or being their friend or enemy or rival.

source: - "Neal Stephenson Speaks about His Latest Epic: 'Seveneves'". Interview with Adrian Liang, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 21, 2015.

Topics: Knowing, Enemy, Rivals

Just as an informal, nonscientific observation, most people's personalities don't seem to change very much during their lives. There are exceptions in the case of people who go through hugely traumatic events or suffer from brain injury or disease. Some would argue that religious conversions can have deep personality-altering effects. But these are all exceptions to the rule.

source: - "Neal Stephenson Speaks about His Latest Epic: 'Seveneves'". Interview With Adrian Liang, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 21, 2015.

Topics: Religious, Exception To The Rule, People, Brain Injury, Traumatic Events

I think that this vein is close to being mined out already, but I'll say that my knowledge of and talent for linguistics are quite limited and I'm not aware of being a hell of a lot more interested in that topic than I am in others.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Thinking, Veins, Topics

It would be quite unusual for me to get deep into a project and then shitcan it. One of the advantages of having done this for a while is that I have a better sense than I used to of when something is or isn't working. Until I developed that sense, this was a pretty dicey career for me, both in terms of paying the rent, and emotional wear and tear.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Emotional, Careers, Tears

I'm strictly a one-project-at-a-time kind of guy. If I came up with a compelling idea for a different book while working on a project, I'd probably abandon the first project and go with the new idea.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Book, Ideas, Guy, Different Books

At the beginning of the project, I wasn't certain that I could come up with an engaging storyline and cast of characters in this world, so I had a strong bias toward actually writing, and worrying about research later. In other words, I was afraid that I'd devote a year or two of my life to grinding through Kant and Husserl, then discover that there simply was no novel to be written here.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Strong, Character, Writing, Storyline

In the case of Anathem, most of the research had to do with philosophy and metaphysics. Reading this sort of thing has never been my strong suit, so I actually had to be somewhat more "organized and results-driven" than is my habit. I just made up my mind that I was going to have to read some of these philosophy tomes, and I forced myself to read something like 10 pages a day until I had bashed my way through them.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Strong, Philosophy, Reading

The less attractive the character, the more I enjoyed writing them. Officious bureaucrats and PowerPoint weasels are where it's at for me.

source: - Source: bookpage.com

Topics: Writing, Character, Attractive

What writers of fantasy, science fiction, and much historical fiction do for a living is different from what writers of so-called literary or other kinds of fiction do. The name of the game in F/SF/HF is creating fictional worlds and then telling particular stories set in those worlds. If you're doing it right, then the reader, coming to the end of the story, will say, "Hey, wait a minute, there are so many other stories that could be told in this universe!" And that's how we get the sprawling, coherent fictional universes that fandom is all about.

source: - Source: www.omnivoracious.com

Topics: Games, Names, Creating, Fandoms, Fictional Worlds

Whenever I get distracted or bored, my eyes wander over to that chalkboard and I read the words. Some of them grow on me, and others annoy me. I attack the latter with eraser and chalk, and keep nudging at them until I like the way they look and sound. Others never make the cut at all and simply get erased. Perhaps one day I will sell these on eBay to RPG players who need names for characters or alien races.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Character, Eye, Cutting, Rpgs, Chalkboards

We see everything from the narrator's point of view, so exposition about the world is limited to what impinges directly on him and the story he's telling. Considering how old the world is, we learn very little about its history, which I think is a good thing.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Thinking, Views, Narrators

But I'm not a small-literary-novel kind of guy, and once I'd developed the world in the first couple of hundred pages, I felt that there was potential here to go on and write an engaging story set in that world. So that's what I did. This probably ruins things both for the people who want small literary novels and for those who want action-packed epics, but anyway, it's what I wrote.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Couple, Writing, Epic

[Regarding] the soul, I'm a little wary of any discourse on that topic that pretends to have an answer, so I tend to keep my musings to myself. There is interesting, legitimate metaphysical work on the topic going at least as far back as Leibniz and continuing today, following the theme that consciousness, or at least computation, might be at least as fundamental as phenomena such as space, time, energy, and matter, which are the usual subject matter of physics. I follow that sort of thing with interest but with very modest expectations that answers will be arrived at during my lifetime.

source: - Source: www.omnivoracious.com

Topics: Space, Expectations, Interesting, Space Time, Musings

A species has to become pretty intellectually advanced in order to grasp the concept of death in the abstract, and to dream up the idea of immortality. Long before that (in evolutionary terms) all species with brains have the survival instinct in some form. So, I am just saying that there are many existent proofs of species that have one, but not the other.

source: - Source: www.omnivoracious.com

Topics: Dream, Ideas, Order, Survival Instinct

Early on, I settled on the first-person strategy as a way to deal with exposition and world-description issues. As long as the book is, it could have been far longer had I gone with an omniscient third-person narrator, or multiple point-of-view characters, since either of those would have enabled me to impart much more detailed information about the history and geography of the world.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Book, Character, Issues, Third Person