Neal Stephenson Quote

He looked behind him at the unadorned outer walls of the Septizodium. He stood in an alley, one of the many unmarked and unmemorable gaps between buildings in Rome. The door through which he had stumbled wasn’t a real door, but a clever panel of stone. Any other time, he would never have noticed it against the mottled background of the surrounding stone, but it hung open now, and a column of black smoke spiraled up from it. There were other spires of smoke rising over the rooftop; clearly, there were other exits from the Septizodium. They might not have been plain to those who were sequestered inside, but smoke had a talent for finding a way out.

Neal Stephenson

He looked behind him at the unadorned outer walls of the Septizodium. He stood in an alley, one of the many unmarked and unmemorable gaps between buildings in Rome. The door through which he had stumbled wasn’t a real door, but a clever panel of stone. Any other time, he would never have noticed it against the mottled background of the surrounding stone, but it hung open now, and a column of black smoke spiraled up from it. There were other spires of smoke rising over the rooftop; clearly, there were other exits from the Septizodium. They might not have been plain to those who were sequestered inside, but smoke had a talent for finding a way out.

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About Neal Stephenson

Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.
Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.
Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and is also a cofounder of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020.