Top 100 Stephenson Quotes
#1. [Stephenson] believes that, as research becomes more airborne and more office-bound, we generalize more and more, and we lose the vast range of wolf experience; in fact, there are soft wolves and hard wolves, kind wolves and malicious wolves, soldiers and nurses, philosophers and bullies.
Peter Steinhart
#2. Neal Stephenson handles exposition better than anybody else. I keep trying to learn his tricks, but every time I duck into his pages, I get lost in the stories all over again and forget that I'm a writer.
Stephen Graham Jones
#3. [In eighteenth-century Britain] engineers for the most began as simple workmen, skilful and ambitious but usually illiterate and self-taught. They were either millwrights like Bramah, mechanics like Murdoch and George Stephenson, or smiths like Newcomen and Maudslay.
John Desmond Bernal
#4. If it hadn't been for Bill Macdonald's book 'The True Intrepid,' I might never have found out about the women who went down to work in secret in New York for our own spymaster Sir William Stephenson in the Second World War.
Susanna Kearsley
#5. George Stephenson, with a sagacity of mind in advance of the science of his day, answered, when asked what was the ultimate cause of motion of his locomotive engine, 'that it went by the bottled-up rays of the sun.
Carl Wilhelm Siemens
#6. I have been reading a delightful, though perhaps rather bitchy new book by Fr. Stephenson about Walsingham and Fr. H.P. There is a vignette of H.P. instructing the Sunday school children on what to do when confronted with an unbaptized person dying in a railway carriage.
Hazel Holt
#7. The director is a Canadian, Jeff Stephenson, and any time I get a script that has any Canadian component, I'm always immediately much more interested.
Kathleen Robertson
#8. Neal Stephenson is great. He can write about a white wall for six pages, and it sounds fascinating. I read the whole 'Baroque Cycle' and 'Cryptonomicon.'
Daniel Suarez
#9. Until I was 16, I read nothing but science fiction. I loved William Gibson and I still do. But my favourite book when I was growing up, for a long time, was 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson, which I must have read about a dozen times when I was a teenager.
Ned Beauman
#10. 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
#11. One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for may people, is not that he's socially inept - because everybody's been there - but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.
Neal Stephenson
#12. She had stayed inside so that she could watch it on the TV in the room, let him know how it had looked on video, how the commentators and pundits had framed it. It
Neal Stephenson
#13. Even the God of the New Testament is not as forgiving as the consumer credit system.
Neal Stephenson
#14. Then she felt shock and shame over the fact that she was thinking about coffee while her planet was being set on fire.
Neal Stephenson
#15. I have devoted much effort, during the last decade or so, to the systematic encouragement of subversiveness.
Neal Stephenson
#16. That's even worse. They'll steal it. Then they'll say they didn't steal it, they confiscated it. I know you Feds, you're always confiscating shit.
Neal Stephenson
#17. Jad said, "The leakage was forcing choices, the making of which in no way improved matters."
Okay. So we were, in effect, locked in a room with a madman sorcerer. That clarified things a little.
Neal Stephenson
#19. Their eyes meet and her heart starts flopping around weakly, like a bunny in a Ziploc bag. He grins and waves.
Neal Stephenson
#20. At the entrance of this street, a Janissary was pinned to a wooden door by an eight-foot-long spear, which Jack looked on as proving that Yevgeny had passed by there recently.
Neal Stephenson
#21. Indeed, cousine, I should rather you were a sincere Satanist than a pretend one; for the former recognizes God's majesty, and may be reformed, while the latter is an atheist, and doomed to the Lake of Fire.
Neal Stephenson
#22. You could get used to anything. You got used to it and then time raced by, and before you knew it, time was up
Neal Stephenson
#23. For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.
Neal Stephenson
#24. The kind of woman who could pleasantly instruct you to fuck off, dear, and you immediately would because you'd just hate to disappoint her.
Neal Stephenson
#25. It was humanly impossible to extend to seven billion people the full sympathy that each of them deserved.
Neal Stephenson
#26. It was more likely that they would lose consciousness from the gee forces first - a relatively painless way to go.
Neal Stephenson
#27. I'll buy it right now, Jack," said an English voice, somehow familiar, "if you stop being such a fucking tosser, that is.
Neal Stephenson
#28. If you have a heartbeat, there's still time for your dreams.
Sean Stephenson
#29. Overestimating the intelligence of the enemy is, if anything, more dangerous than underestimating it.
Neal Stephenson
#30. The trees are a thousand times taller than me, and hundreds of years older, and the rocks and leaves and plants and animals never do anything silly like kill each other or fall in love or grow up.
Ben Stephenson
#31. Judge Fang got to eat this way only when someone really important was trying to taint him, and though he had never knowingly allowed his judicial judgment to be swayed, he did enjoy the chow.
Neal Stephenson
#32. In the background she can hear the shopping carts performing their clashy, anal copulations.
Neal Stephenson
#33. This may not however elevate your stature during the years you have remaining; for fame's a weed, but repute is a slow-growing oak, and all we can do during our lifetimes is hop around like squirrels and plant acorns.
Neal Stephenson
#34. Everybody wants to make as much money as possible. Take care of your family. It's not about the money; it's about status. I want to be ranked amongst all the players. I don't want to just have all this money. I want to be that guy.
Lance Stephenson
#35. So she spends until about eleven A.M. reading, re-reading, and understanding the new changes in the Project. There are many of these, because this is a Monday morning and Marietta and her higher-ups spent the whole weekend closeted on the top floor, having a
Neal Stephenson
#36. whose picture appeared to be a state-issued ID of an octogenarian drag queen. I
Neal Stephenson
#37. The full cosmos consists of the physical stuff and consciousness. Take away consciousness and it's only dust; add consciousness and you get things, ideas, and time.
Neal Stephenson
#38. Not that any of the sysadmin's knowledge and skills were applicable here.
The psychological stance was the thing: the implicit faith, a little naive and a little cocky, that by banging his head against the problem for long enough he'd be able to break through in the end.
Neal Stephenson
#39. People tried and failed to combine the words Izzy and Ymir. The closest they came was Izmir, but that had been the name of a city in Turkey.
Neal Stephenson
#40. To tell you the truth although it would put £500 in my pockets to specify my own patent rails, I cannot do so after the experience I have had.
George Stephenson
#41. His real job - the job that the Owners paid him for - was to be an observer of the human condition as it was so richly displayed from day to day within these walls.
Neal Stephenson
#42. And so what moved him onward and down the office building's stairway was not any sort of foolish hope that he could actually be saved, but competitive fury at the fact that he had been outdone by the suicidal improvisations of this fanatic.
Neal Stephenson
#43. Lawrence concluded that Alan's penis scheme must have finally found a taker.
Neal Stephenson
#44. Fighting isn't about knowing how. It's about deciding to.
Neal Stephenson
#45. As soon as you open the door wide enough to admit pink nerve-gas-farting dragons, you have let in all of those other possibilities as well.
Neal Stephenson
#46. Flame within them gets dim with the passage of time. So, if you have the fire, run, since you never know when it may be doused, leaving you stranded in darkness. - John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Step
Neal Stephenson
#47. Well," says Uncle Enzo. It is the "well" that begins the end of a
conversation. "I was going to send you some roses, but you wouldn't really be
interested in that, would you?
Neal Stephenson
#48. Emacs is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful.
Neal Stephenson
#49. us - I looked at that beautiful snow-capped mountain and named it Eliza. Because it was warm, fertile, and beautiful below, while being a bit frosty and inaccessible at the top - yet possessing a volcanick profile foretelling explosions -
Neal Stephenson
#50. In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not at a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity : Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.
Neal Stephenson
#51. 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 itself out eventually.
Neal Stephenson
#52. Technically speaking, the pond should be full of carp, but Hiro is American enough to think of carp as inedible dinosaurs that sit on the bottom and eat sewage.
Neal Stephenson
#53. As your demeanor has been nonaggressive and you carry no visible weapons, we are not authorized to employ heroic measures to ensure your cooperation," the first MetaCop says. "You stay cool and we'll stay cool," the second MetaCop says.
Neal Stephenson
#54. 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
#55. I am what I am," Ty said. "And what is that?" Ariane asked. "A bartender. Always happy to make new acquaintances." He nodded at Bard. "Or to provide guests with drinks. Anyone thirsty?
Neal Stephenson
#56. I hadn't known that,' I said. 'I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there.' 'There might as well be,' Arsibalt said, 'but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs.
Neal Stephenson
#57. Fearless for oneself, fear for others - that must be what it means to be a hero.
Neal Stephenson
#58. 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 always retained its equilibrium, like a cork that could float as well in spring water or raw sewage.
Neal Stephenson
#59. I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor.
Neal Stephenson
#60. We hide in plain sight, and it works. Majestically. Everyone else can fuck the fuck off.
Eric Stephenson
#61. True beauty is to be found in natural forms. The more we magnify, and the closer we examine, the works of Artifice, the grosser and stupider they seem. But if we magnify the natural world it only becomes more intricate and excellent.
Neal Stephenson
#62. Vitaly owns half a carton of Lucky Strikes, an electric guitar, and a hangover
Neal Stephenson
#63. But the rest of our lives will happen in the future, Randy, so we might as well get with the program now.
Neal Stephenson
#64. I heard an older, softer male voice say. I knew that voice had a name attached to it - Yoda? No, Yoda was from Star Wars. Star Wars was on my mind because of R2-D2.
Neal Stephenson
#65. There are always fuckups, and there is always a goat. Sometimes the goat is you.
Neal Stephenson
#66. Getting through the intersection involves tracing paths through the parking system, many braided filaments of direction like the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Neal Stephenson
#67. But at last I came to understand that I was making it too complicated. For you, this is no mingling at all; for you the Book of Revelation, the ramblings of Hermes Trismegistus, and Principia Mathematica are all signatures torn from the same immense Book.
Neal Stephenson
#68. If the Cloud Ark survived, it would survive on a water-based economy.
Neal Stephenson
#69. Space and Time! Two minor omissions that no one is likely to notice," grumbled Newton.
Neal Stephenson
#70. Clyde had a theory that women had a book, a homemade, photocopied three-ring binder called "Surprising Things to Do in a Relationship," which they passed around to one another, adding pages from time to time, hiding it under the bed. He figured that Desiree could run home tonight and add a new page.
Neal Stephenson
#71. Certain first-year-physics conservation-of-momentum issues dictated that I be showered with former pig bowel contents in order to enhance shareholder value.
Neal Stephenson
#72. When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.
Neal Stephenson
#73. That time in Seattle - during the lawsuit - was a fucking nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX." "Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive.
Neal Stephenson
#74. The suspect had experienced a ballistic interlude earlier in the evening," Miss Pao said, "regrettably not filmed, and relieved himself of excess velocity by means of an ablative technique." (describing a young man who flew off a bicycle at high speed)
Neal Stephenson
#75. None of them have cars, but when they do, they are three-ton hand-built beasts.
Neal Stephenson
#76. For members of the general public might not care about Wolf-Rayet stars in the Quintuplet Cluster, but they definitely saw why having hot rocks fall on one's head was a good thing to avoid.
Neal Stephenson
#77. Most of the brain's work is done while the brain's owner is ostensibly thinking about something else, so sometimes you have to deliberately find something else to think and talk about.
Neal Stephenson
#78. Semper Fidelis
Dawn star flares on disk of night
I fall, sun rises
Neal Stephenson
#79. Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.
Neal Stephenson
#80. I'm carrying an iPhone 5. I like this device. It's been impressive. I have a Windows and an Android device ... I carry an iPad. I carry a Kindle ... Yeah, I have a lot of devices.
Randall L. Stephenson
#81. The qualifications for being a Scout seemed to be a shocking level of physical endurance, a complete disregard for mortal danger, and some knowledge of how to exist in a space suit. All of them were Russian.
Neal Stephenson
#82. She just didn't think it decent to live in a place where there were no coffee shops to have breakfast in when she woke up,
Neal Stephenson
#83. Extremely dangerous drug-related occupations for which decoy served as a paid audition of sorts. A start weapons system was a wise investment. The
Neal Stephenson
#84. It's daytime. A wall of billowing orange flame grows up silently from the tank farm a mile away, like a time-lapse chrysanthemum. It is so vast and complicated in its blooming, uncontrolled growth that Rife stops halfway up the stairs to watch.
Neal Stephenson
#85. Morse code didn't leave a paper trail, or an email thread on the screen of your tablet. She would never be able to scroll back and reread the exchange she'd just had with Rufus.
Neal Stephenson
#86. There seems to be this impression that if I really am a psychotherapist, I can't be serious about it. They think there must be something fishy going on.
Pamela Stephenson
#87. All duty is inconvenient to a greater or lesser degree, or it would not be duty.
Neal Stephenson
#88. You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake' ...
Neal Stephenson
#89. Later, he was to decide that Andrew's life had been fractally weird. That is, you could take any small piece of it and examine it in detail and it, in and of itself, would turn out to be just as complicated and weird as the whole thing in its entirety.
Neal Stephenson
#91. As convenient as it is for information to come to us, libraries do have a valuable side effect: they force all of the smart people to come together in one place where they can interact with one another.
Neal Stephenson
#92. Now he had learned that a machine, simple in its design, could produce results of infinite complexity.
Neal Stephenson
#93. You bent my words again," says Goto Dengo. "You spoke crooked words and I straightened them,
Neal Stephenson
#94. I've really written my books for my husband and our family. They've brought us closer together by allowing us to discuss things that were unspoken for so long.
Pamela Stephenson
#95. Gratitude and obedience. At The Frogs, the relationship between a knight and the people was clearly understood.
Neal Stephenson
#96. The complications, as always, had to do with avoiding collisions and respecting what was still called "air space" around habitats, even though it had no air in it and might more properly have been called "space space.
Neal Stephenson
#97. Of persons I will say this: it is difficult to tell when they are running aright but easy to see when something has gone awry.
Neal Stephenson
#98. Downtown is before them, as high and bright as the aurora borealis rising from the black water of the Bering Sea.
Neal Stephenson
#99. He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him, and confused by the fact that he cared so deeply about her opinion. And she, maybe, was beginning to think that if Hiro was so convinced in his own mind that he was unworthy of her, maybe he knew something she didn't. Hiro
Neal Stephenson
#100. Any power structure one of whose main goals was to prevent humans from fucking each other at will had to be extremely formidable.
Neal Stephenson
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