“As the saying goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Reader,” — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
You don't want your readers seeing easy connections; it becomes a distraction. — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
What writers of fantasy, science fiction, and much historical fiction do for a living is different from what writers of so-called literary… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
Early on, I settled on the first-person strategy as a way to deal with exposition and world-description issues. As long as the… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
But I'm not a small-literary-novel kind of guy, and once I'd developed the world in the first couple of hundred pages, I… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
I try to find a style that matches the book. In the Baroque Cycle, I got infected with the prose style of… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
If the item of stolen property had been anything other than a book, it would have been confiscated. But a book is… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“The rough-and-ready intellectual consensus of the mid-Twentieth Century is being pushed out by a New Superstition whose victims can find testimony on… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“Now this was like trying to comprehend all the activity of an anthill, and read all the words in a book, and… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“Readers of this memo will be disappointed to know that Bong-Bong Gad (sic), designer/owner/driver/proprietor of the vehicle, anticipated the inevitable "there but… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“The problem of the librarian is that books are multi-dimensional in their subject matter but must be ordered on one-dimensional shelves.” — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“Right, by tomorrow morning everyone will have congregated in Le Havre and you can all pile in the car and come back… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
I really am just trying to tell stories. But stories are often grounded in larger events and themes. They don't have to… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
I'm strictly a one-project-at-a-time kind of guy. If I came up with a compelling idea for a different book while working on… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“Randy does a sorting procedure on the diving books now: he ignores anything that has color photographs, or that appears to have… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“Reader, if you don’t know what a database is, rest assured that an explanation of the concept would in no way increase… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
When I read a novel that I really like, I feel as if I am in direct, personal communication with the author.… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“Clyde had a theory that women had a book, a homemade, photocopied three-ring binder called "Surprising Things to Do in a Relationship,"… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“I study dead languages for a living,” I said. “That’s why you hired me. Why should I be up to speed on your line… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“Other people - store clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America - other people… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“It is what you don’t expect,” he’d said, “that most needs looking for.” “Do” — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“...the insects here see you as a big slab of animated but not very well defended food. The ability to move, far from being… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“There was no way that these guys were going to let a bleeding, barefoot woman simply wander off alone into the streets. Two of… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“Space and Time! Two minor omissions that no one is likely to notice," grumbled Newton.” — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places, — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“Hey,” Shaftoe says, “if we surrender to you, you’ll kill us. Right?” “Yes.” “If you guys surrender to us, we won’t kill you. Promise.… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“My men think you are dead now, and won’t waste balls on you,” Jack said. “In fact I have let you live, but for… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“You’ve probably heard the expression that the Industry feeds off of biomass, like a whale straining krill from the ocean.” — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
“The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out… — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
Interesting things happen along borders - transitions - not in the middle where everything is the same. — Neal Stephenson Copy Share Image
