“ Cnán knew these gleaners and their types well enough that she could pick them out even in a healthy city. Not always were they the furtive criminals or crazed drunks. Indeed, within her short life, sh… Neal Stephenson
“ 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… Neal Stephenson
“ What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem and enumerated all of the dissastisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; t… Neal Stephenson
“ To this point it probably looks like I am setting this up as a slam-dunk case for ambulating while working, and getting ready to lambaste treadmill-resistant managers as insensitive and tragically sho… Neal Stephenson
“ Saunt: (1) In New Orth, a term of veneration applied to great thinkers, almost always posthumously. Note: this word was accepted only in the Millennial Orth Convox of A.R. 3000. Prior to then it was c… Neal Stephenson
“ Now keep in mind that the typical Greek myth goes something like this: innocent shepherd boy is minding his own business, an overflying god spies him and gets a hard-on, swoops down and rapes him sill… Neal Stephenson
“ For each stop—each timbre, or type of sound, that the organ could make (viz. blockflöte, trumpet, piccolo)—there was a separate row of pipes, arranged in a line from long to short. Long pipes made low… Neal Stephenson
“ Class is more than income - it has to do with knowing where you stand in a web of social relationships. Neal Stephenson
“ It was more likely that they would lose consciousness from the gee forces first—a relatively painless way to go. Neal Stephenson
“ Channeling Mongolian warriors. In 2007 Cooper fought a Chinese long-sword instructor on a Hong Kong rooftop—he never thought the experience would help him write battle scenes. In addition to being a m… Neal Stephenson
“ When it gets really intolerable, he goes to the latrine (so that the staff will not break in on him at an inopportune moment) and executes a Manual Override. Neal Stephenson
“ The biggest machines, in those days, were already pushing the limits of what could be constructed on Arbre with reasonable amounts of money.I hadn't known that, I said. I always tend to assume there's… Neal Stephenson
“ Shit, if I took time out to have an opinion about everything, I wouldn't get any work done. Neal Stephenson
“ One of the great virtues of Confucianism was its suppleness. Western political thought tended to be rather brittle; as soon as the state became corrupt, everything ceased to make sense. Confucianism a… Neal Stephenson
“ Mathic architects were helpless when it came to walls. Pillars they could do. Arches they were fine with. Vaults, which were just three-dimensional arches, they knew everything about. But ask them to… Neal Stephenson
