{"author":"Neal Stephenson","author_id":"Neal+Stephenson","total_quotes":87,"quotes":[{"text":"But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.S, the Deliverator’s report card would say: 'Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["life-philosophy"],"id":3940,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"},{"text":"A red dragonfly hovers above a backwater of the stream, its wings moving so fast that the eye sees not wings in movement but a probability distribution of where the wings might be, like electron orbitals: a quantum-mechanical effect that maybe explains why the insect can apparently teleport from one place to another, disappearing from one point and reappearing a couple of meters away, without seeming to pass through the space in between. There sure is a lot of bright stuff in the jungle. Randy figures that, in the natural world, anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["evolution","insect","quantum"],"id":5364,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"},{"text":"Most men would rather be shot through with a broad-headed arrow than be described by you.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["empathy","harsh","observant"],"id":5754,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"},{"text":"In the timeless and universal manner of authors conversing in public places, he did not fail to mention its title, “Volume III of Principia Mathematica entitled, The System of the World, available shortly, where books are sold.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["book-tour","marketing"],"id":7764,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"},{"text":"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.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["historical-fiction","humor","internet","neal","stephenson","wwii"],"id":19147,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"},{"text":"Men believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time. Bobby Shaftoe learned most of his practical knowledge – how to fix a car, butcher a deer, throw a spiral, talk to a lady, kill a Nip – from the latter type of man. For them, trying to do anything by talking is like trying to pound in a nail with a screwdriver. Sometimes you can see the desperation spread over such a man’s face as he listens to himself speak.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["action","contemplation","quiet","speaking"],"id":31241,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"},{"text":"Just aiming a speely input device, or a Farspark chambre, or whatever you call it... A speelycaptor... At something doesn't collect what is meaningful to me. I need someone to gather it in with all their senses, mix it round in their head, and make it over into words.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["hip","books","media","technology"],"id":36788,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"},{"text":"When the Bolide Fragmentation Rate shot up through a certain level on Day 701, marking the formal beginning of the White Sky, a number of cultural organizations launched programs that they had been planning since around the time of the Crater Lake announcement. Many of these were broadcast on shortwave radio, and so Ivy had her pick of programs from Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Tiananmen Square, the Potala Palace, the Great Pyramids, the Wailing Wall. After sampling all of them she locked her radio dial on Notre Dame, where they were holding the Vigil for the End of the World and would continue doing so until the cathedral fell down in ruins upon the performers’ heads and extinguished all life in the remains of the building. She couldn’t watch it, since video bandwidth was scarce, but she could imagine it well: the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, its ranks swollen by the most prestigious musicians of the Francophone world, all dressed in white tie and tails, ball gowns and tiaras, performing in shifts around the clock, playing a few secular classics but emphasizing the sacred repertoire: masses and requiems. The music was marred by the occasional thud, which she took to be the sonic booms of incoming bolides. In most cases the musicians played right through. Sometimes a singer would skip a beat. An especially big boom produced screams and howls of dismay from the audience, blended with the clank and clatter of shattered stained glass raining to the cathedral’s stone floor. But for the most part the music played sweetly, until it didn’t. Then there was nothing.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["apocalypse"],"id":51349,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"},{"text":"I just saved your fucking life, Mom. . . . You could at least offer me an Oreo.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["science-fiction"],"id":52709,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"},{"text":"Technically, of course, he was right. Socially, he was annoying us.","author":"Neal Stephenson","tags":["annoying","social","socially-inept"],"id":54389,"author_id":"Neal+Stephenson"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":87,"pages":9,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}