Neal Stephenson

“Donald Cameron has his own character in the world now!?” Skeletor exclaimed, in somewhat the same tone of voice as a tribune…

— Neal Stephenson

Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you…

— Neal Stephenson

“Men sailed jachts across the sea and gave them to her, just to get her attention. And so perhaps her fires had…

— Neal Stephenson

A lot of secular, modern people claim to be disillusioned whenever they learn that any smart person is religious. That's applicable to…

— Neal Stephenson

“If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to…

— Neal Stephenson

“Private Hott is with God now—or wherever people go after they die,” says Enoch “You can call me Brother” Root. “What kind…

— 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…

— Neal Stephenson

“First, I must be getting the money on my side, because after magic wanes money is the most powerful thing on earth…

— Neal Stephenson

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker…

— Neal Stephenson

“The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to…

— Neal Stephenson

“Virgil returned to the Operator’s Station and entered a single command. Its effect was to draw together the reins of the eighteen…

— Neal Stephenson

“The example cited most often was a gradual change in eye color among Moirans. Eve Moira’s eyes had been hazel: relatively light…

— Neal Stephenson

“Unix is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our…

— Neal Stephenson

“The difference between stupid and intelligent people -- and this is true whether or not they are well-educated -- is that intelligent…

— Neal Stephenson

At the beginning of the project, I wasn't certain that I could come up with an engaging storyline and cast of characters…

— Neal Stephenson

“This is a very odd conversation,” Dappa observed. “On an arbitrary numerical scale of conversational oddness, ranging from one to ten, with…

— Neal Stephenson

“In the center of that open space, a bony woman in a threadbare garment was hunched over a dead plant. Sword of…

— Neal Stephenson

“What awaited them there could only be guessed at, but for Ariane it was probably going to be a substantial reward, a…

— Neal Stephenson

“With any job, there’s some creative work that needs to be done—new technology to be developed or whatever. Everything else—ninety-nine percent of…

— Neal Stephenson

“Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he’ll come up with something that looks like the boxes that…

— Neal Stephenson

“The same thrust, pushing against a greatly reduced burden, would then yield acceleration that Lio had cheerfully described as 'near-fatal.' 'But it's…

— Neal Stephenson

Most of the brain's work is done while the brain's owner is ostensibly thinking about something else, so sometimes you have to…

— Neal Stephenson

“Richard's ex-girlfriends were long gone, but their voices followed him all the time and spoke to him, like Muses or Furies. It…

— Neal Stephenson

“This is an incredibly realistic training exercise—even down to the point of using ethnically correct pilots, and detonating fake explosives on the…

— Neal Stephenson

I think visual literacy and media literacy is not without value, but I think plain old-fashioned text literacy and mathematical literacy are…

— Neal Stephenson

“What do you think of her?” Csongor asked. “Is she your girlfriend?” “For a while I was thinking maybe,” Marlon admitted, “but…

— Neal Stephenson

“People have a need to feel that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go on without them. It…

— Neal Stephenson

“They walk into the hop field. Carefully. There is an enveloping smell, a resiny odor not unlike marijuana, the sharp smell that…

— Neal Stephenson

In the room where I work, I have a chalkboard, and as I'm going along, I write the made-up words on it.…

— Neal Stephenson

“Clarity of mind (Cm) is affected by any number of factors, but by far the most important is horniness, which might be…

— Neal Stephenson

“A Kourier has to establish space on the pavement. Predictable law-abiding behavior lulls drivers. They mentally assign you to a little box…

— Neal Stephenson

As convenient as it is for information to come to us, libraries do have a valuable side effect: they force all of…

— Neal Stephenson

“This is a terrible country for old people. You put them away in horrible buildings that are completely shut off from life,…

— 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…

— Neal Stephenson

“I had to ride my bike to and from their god damn plant way up north in the high-chemical crime district, and…

— Neal Stephenson

“it was connected, by an underground tunnel and secret passages on every floor, directly to the brewery itself—thus allowing johns who needed…

— Neal Stephenson

The story is everything, so it always begins with a story.And research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as…

— Neal Stephenson

“You mentioned . . . one of the two great labyrinths into which the mind is drawn. What . . . is…

— Neal Stephenson

“You should be a billionaire, Randy. Thank god you're not." "Why do you say that?" "Oh, because then you'd be a highly…

— Neal Stephenson

“likewise, none of us could possibly know how to behave appropriately with the new witches. She maintained all of her charismatic narcissistic…

— Neal Stephenson