Interesting things happen along borders - transitions - not in the middle where everything is the same. Neal Stephenson More Quotes by Neal Stephenson More Quotes From Neal Stephenson Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot. Neal Stephenson bustlecaliforniasouthern Boredom is a mask frustration wears. Neal Stephenson maskboredomfrustration Gold is the corpse of value. Neal Stephenson corpsesvaluesgold ... when I saw any of those kinds of beauty I knew I was alive, and not just in the sense that when I hit my thumb with a hammer I knew I was alive, but rather in the sense that I was partaking of something--something was passing through me that it was in my nature to be a part of. Neal Stephenson thumbshammersalive This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research. Neal Stephenson faculty-membersresearchpeople 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 defenseand-loveimportant Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying. Neal Stephenson knivestwodirty Middle class prosperity is lapidary; the flow of cash rounds and smooths a person like water does riverbed stones. Neal Stephenson doeclasswater Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead. Neal Stephenson badassselfnumbers 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 alchemists' uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn't work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish. Neal Stephenson technologycivilizationart It is the fate of operating systems to become free. Neal Stephenson operating-systemsfate The only thing that can effect a big change in personality is something that physically rewires the brain and/or alters the body's chemical milieu. Neal Stephenson bodypersonalitybrain Hostility towards Microsoft is not difficult to find on the Net, and it blends two strains: resentful people who feel Microsoft is too powerful, and disdainful people who think it's tacky. This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments. Microsoft is the very embodiment of modern high-tech prosperity - it is, in a word, bourgeois - and so it attracts all of the same gripes. Neal Stephenson powerfultwothinking Most of my colleagues go on backpacking trips when they have to do some thinking. I go to a good hardware store and head for the oiliest, dustiest corners... If they're really good, they don't hassle me. They let me wander around and think. Young hardware clerks have a lot of hubris. They think they can help you find anything... Old hardware clerks have learned the hard way that nothing in a hardware store ever gets bought for its nominal purpose. You buy something that was designed to do one thing, and you use it for another. Neal Stephenson clerksusethinking Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code. Neal Stephenson informationnoiselooks Technically, of course, he was right. Socially, he was annoying us. Neal Stephenson coursesannoying When I read a novel that I really like, I feel as if I am in direct, personal communication with the author. I feel as if the author and I are on the same wavelength mentally, that we have a lot in common with each other, and that we could have an interesting conversation, or even a friendship, if the circumstances permitted it. When the novel comes to an end, I feel a certain letdown, a loss of contact. It is natural to want to recapture that feeling by reading other works by the same author, or by corresponding with him/her directly. Neal Stephenson communicationreadingloss So a lot of what you see in the Baroque Cycle is me wanting to be one of those guys. In the case of Anathem, I needed something that was more formal, less flashy, as if it had been translated from the classical language of another planet, but enlivened with slang terms that a teenage narrator would enjoy throwing around. Neal Stephenson narratorsteenageguy The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallow subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books. Neal Stephenson lightnightbook If the item of stolen property had been anything other than a book, it would have been confiscated. But a book is different - it is not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and thence to a well-ordered society. Neal Stephenson pathwaysmindbook
