“ Everything from the brim of this hat to the hem of her dress was too complex for Daniel’s eye to comprehend—he was like an illiterate savage staring at the first page of an illuminated Bible—but Neal Stephenson
“ Every true heart needed a pragmatic counterweight, and every cynic an idealist to lift his spirits. Neal Stephenson
“ Every parent of a teenager gets used to it: the moment in a child’s life when he or she decides that certain facts are just too much trouble to explain to Mom or Dad. The parents can’t, and needn’t, k… Neal Stephenson
“ Even though he grew up in churches, raised by church people, Waterhouse (as must be obvious by this point) never really understood their attitudes about sex. Why did they get so hung up on that one is… Neal Stephenson
“ 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 Neal Stephenson
“ Earth looked as if some god had attacked it with a welder’s torch, slashing away at it and leaving thin trails of incandescence. Neal Stephenson
“ Early in the Reticulum—thousands of years ago—it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading information, Sammann said. Crap, you once called it, I re… Neal Stephenson
“ Downtown is before them, as high and bright as the aurora borealis rising from the black water of the Bering Sea. Neal Stephenson
“ Dinah could spend the rest of her life living by her word, giving everyone a fair shake, and all of that. Rufus would no doubt approve of all those things. But it was not the charge he had given her.… Neal Stephenson
“ Diax said something that is still very important to us, which is that you should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. Neal Stephenson
“ Daniel was slow to take up the cheer. But when he did, he meant it. This was politics. It was ugly, it was irrational, but it was preferable to war. Roger was being cheered because he had won. What di… Neal Stephenson
“ Commuters lining up at the tube stations, waiting to cross the Causeway into Greater Shanghai, seen only as a storm front of neonstained, coal-scented smog that encompassed the horizon. Neal Stephenson
“ Certain objects that are supposed to (a) remain horizontal and (b) support heavy things have ceased to do either. Neal Stephenson
“ But your way isn't just that set of rules, Cord said. It's who you are — you follow that way for bigger reasons. And as long as you stay true to that, the confusion you’re talking about will sort itse… Neal Stephenson
“ But when you walk through yonder gate, Churchill said, pointing toward the Middle Tower at the end of the causeway, which was visible only as a crenellated cutout in the orange sky, you’ll find yourse… Neal Stephenson
“ But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people in the world all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost—swal… Neal Stephenson
“ 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… Neal Stephenson
“ But the Owners really valued the Crow’s Nest partly as a cultural institution and partly because it gave them access to the sort of information about the lives, thoughts, and deeds of important person… Neal Stephenson
“ But if you use shortwave, then you can bounce the information off the ionosphere. This works a good deal better when the sun is not in the sky, sluicing the atmosphere with wideband noise. So radio te… Neal Stephenson
“ 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… Neal Stephenson
