“ She was just in the process of proving them all desperately wrong. But at this phase, the all-male society of bitheads that made up the power structure of Black Sun Systems said that the face problem… Neal Stephenson
“ Pronounces the name of everything created?'In many Creation myths, to name a thing is to create it. He is referred to, invarious myths, as 'expert who instituted incantations,' 'word-rich,' 'Enki,mast… Neal Stephenson
“ Perception and thought are properties of souls. It is no worse to posit that the fundamental building-block of the Universe is souls than to say it is wee bits of hard stuff, moving about in an empty… Neal Stephenson
“ People who like math. So I was trying to imagine— When seven billion die, and only some thousands remain, where do the seven billion souls go? Yes. Neal Stephenson
“ People who couldn’t live without story had been driven into the concents or into jobs like Yul’s. All others had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I… Neal Stephenson
“ Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bomc,' I said. 'We have a protractor.'Okay, I'll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string. Neal Stephenson
“ One of my professors has interesting things to say about the similarity between the way organ pipes are controlled by keys and stops, and the way random-access memory bits are read by computers. Neal Stephenson
“ Olivia imagined a D-day-style invasion of the island, gardeners with saws and shovels parachuting out of the sky and storming the beaches—and were being liberated from the thorny or flowery embrace of… Neal Stephenson
“ Now this was like trying to comprehend all the activity of an anthill, and read all the words in a book, and feel all the splendor of a cathedral, in one glance. Jack’s mind was not equal to the deman… Neal Stephenson
“ No, said Fraa Jad, they are probably telling us that they have figured out that Edhar, Rambalf, and Tredegarh are where the Sæcular Power stored all of the nuclear waste. Neal Stephenson
“ Nell had to reconstruct them, learning the language, which was extremely pithy and made heavy use of parentheses. Along the way, she proved what was a foregone conclusion, namely, that the system for… Neal Stephenson
“ My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without softwar… Neal Stephenson
“ My colleague Bruce Sterling has defined a thriller as a science fiction novel that includes the President of the United States. Neal Stephenson
“ Moira wished she spoke better Russian so that she could talk to Tekla about her ideas regarding appearance and grooming. The facial scars put her well outside the norms of feminine beauty and she had… Neal Stephenson
“ 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. Neal Stephenson
“ 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. Neal Stephenson
“ Maybe that's how great warriors do it. Carelessly, not wracking their minds with the consequences. Neal Stephenson
“ Like any librarian in Reality, this daemon can move around without audible footfalls. Neal Stephenson
“ Leibniz is proposing a strange inversion of what we normally mean when we describe a man as distinguished, or unique. Normally when we say these things, we mean that the man himself stands out from a… Neal Stephenson
