“ It was possible to look at actual smartphones and tablets and laptops that had been manufactured on Old Earth. They did not work anymore, but their technical capabilities were described on little plac… Neal Stephenson
“ It irritates the hell out of me to be in a situation where I’m forced to do exactly what’s expected. Neal Stephenson
“ In a sword-fighting drill, where one participant is going to mount an attack and the other is to respond in some way, the attacker is known as the agent and the respondent is known as the patient. The… Neal Stephenson
“ If you are that much of a control freak, what sexual preferences does that translate into? I hope I’ll never know. I suppose you would want to dominate a woman. Wrong! Avi said. Sex is more complicate… Neal Stephenson
“ If I had a copper for every fly that swarms on you, beast, I’d buy the Spanish Empire! You smell worse than Vera Cruz in the springtime, and there is more filth clinging to your body than most animals… Neal Stephenson
“ If Hemn space is the landscape, and one cosmos is a single geometric point in it, then a given consciousness is a spot of light moving, like a searchlight beam, over that landscape—brightly illuminati… Neal Stephenson
“ I would say that the ability of people to agree on matters of fact not immediately visible—states of affairs removed from them in space and time—ramped up from a baseline of approximately zero to a pr… Neal Stephenson
“ I know. That's exactly the problem. 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… Neal Stephenson
“ I have spent enough time around Puritans in general, and Boston Puritans in particular, to know what these people will tell her: lock up the library! Or Neal Stephenson
“ I am an Aleut. Oh, I've never heard of that. That's because we've been fucked over, the big scary Aleut says, worse than any other people in history. Neal Stephenson
“ 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 o… Neal Stephenson
“ He remained in engineering and did more and more poorly at it until the middle of his senior year, Neal Stephenson
“ He did not seem to grasp something that was clear enough to me and Cord: namely, that there were extras who would beat up avout simply because it was more entertaining than not beating them up—not bec… Neal Stephenson
“ He closed his eyes and shook his head. I am not one of those who believes that God made the world and walked away from it, that He has no further choices to make, no ongoing presence in the world. I b… Neal Stephenson
“ Hacker with Bullhorn: Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!Prosp… Neal Stephenson
“ Far to the east, just above the horizon, was an especially big dot of light, like the clasp on a necklace. That would be the colossal structure of the Eye, currently stationed above the Atlantic. Neal Stephenson
“ Entire sections of them simply cannot be translated - the characters are legible and well-known, but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modern mind.Like instructi… Neal Stephenson
“ Edzard screamed at the men on the starboard side, threatening to throw them overboard if they didn’t match the pace of the port team. Neal Stephenson
“ Earth materializes, rotating majestically in front of his face. Hiro reaches out and grabs it. He twists it around so he's looking at Oregon. Tells it to get rid of the clouds, and it does, giving him… Neal Stephenson
