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7d0916f
|
All the people saying mean things about me on the Internet are gonna be dead in four hundred and thirty-three days," she said, deadpan."
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Neal Stephenson |
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5ff8cc3
|
I have been clinically depressed for most of my life. I once used drugs to fix it. Then I stopped. I stopped because I decided they were making me stupid, and I'd rather be miserable than stupid. I am what I am.
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Neal Stephenson |
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4c1b100
|
I just saved your fucking life, Mom...It's like, if you--people of a certain age--would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn't have to take these drastic measures.
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Neal Stephenson |
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3ece78c
|
He parks in the far corner of the lot, explaining that it is more logical to do this and then walk for fifteen seconds than it is to spend fifteen minutes looking for a closer space.
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parking
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Neal Stephenson |
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7e52d25
|
Two tires fly. Two Wail. A bamboo grove, all chopped down From it, warring songs.
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Neal Stephenson |
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242759c
|
Computers rely on the one and the zero to represent all things. This distinction between something and nothing--this pivotal separation between being and nonbeing--is quite fundamental and underlies many Creation myths.
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Neal Stephenson |
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e2519ee
|
Being right does not always bring satisfaction,
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Neal Stephenson |
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9073b9e
|
But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people in the world all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost--swallowed up in the ocean--unless you are doing it along with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward.
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Neal Stephenson |
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37db76b
|
Every true heart needed a pragmatic counterweight, and every cynic an idealist to lift his spirits.
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Neal Stephenson |
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011953a
|
He has reverted, in other words, back into a pure balls-to-the-wall nerdism rivaled only by his early game-coding days back in Seattle. The sheer depth and involution of the current nerdism binge would be hard to convey to anyone. Intellectually, he is juggling half a dozen lit torches, Ming vases, live puppies, and running chainsaws. In this frame of mind he cannot bring himself to give a shit about the fact that this incredibly powerful b..
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true
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Neal Stephenson |
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18e8172
|
I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor.
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Neal Stephenson |
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0e77f3a
|
Unfortunately, this category of secret is itself so secret that it's very existance is secret, and he can't actually reveal it to anyone.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7c4ee8e
|
Really, he has only two emotions: sleeping and adrenaline overdrive.
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Neal Stephenson |
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230490e
|
Middle-class prosperity is lapidary; the flow of cash rounds and smooths a person like water does riverbed stones.
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suburbia
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Neal Stephenson |
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2f60690
|
And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way," Leibniz said. "Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle--all in the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe--for he s..
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point-of-view
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Neal Stephenson |
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b651216
|
Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whiskey, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.
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Neal Stephenson |
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9757052
|
If you sincerely believed in God, how could you form one thought, speak one sentence, without mentioning Him?
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Neal Stephenson |
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443dcad
|
The opening screen of T'Rain was a frank rip-off of what you saw when you booted up Google Earth. Richard felt no guilt about this since he had heard that Google Earth in turn was based on an idea from some old science fiction novel
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Neal Stephenson |
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5fa720d
|
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.
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Neal Stephenson |
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49609ba
|
As soon as you're sure you're right, there's no point in your being here.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7ad20ef
|
If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f99d460
|
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,
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Neal Stephenson |
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19bf89f
|
In the wilderness, only the most terrible beasts of prey cavort and gambol. Deer and rabbits play no games.
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Neal Stephenson |
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8922650
|
And Turing answered another," Rudy said. "Who's that?" "It's me," Alan said. "But Rudy's joking. 'Turing' doesn't really have an umlaut in it." "He's going to have an umlaut in him later tonight," Rudy said, looking at Alan in a way that, in retrospect, years later, Lawrence would understand to have been smoldering."
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Neal Stephenson |
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be4a548
|
Shut up about Leibniz for a moment, Rudy, because look here: You--Rudy--and I are on a train, as it were, sitting in the dining car, having a nice conversation, and that train is being pulled along at a terrific clip by certain locomotives named The Bertrand Russell and Riemann and Euler and others. And our friend Lawrence is running alongside the train, trying to keep up with us--it's not that we're smarter than he is, necessarily, but tha..
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Neal Stephenson |
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905d55a
|
They went inside. The young ones shuffled to a stop as their ironic sensibilities, which served them in lieu of souls, were jammed by a signal of overwhelming power.
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humor
generations
|
Neal Stephenson |
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ef66584
|
This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood. As long as you made a point of hanging out exclusively with people who had the wit to see and to understand that objective reality, you didn't have to waste a..
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Neal Stephenson |
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73a51f3
|
BMW drivers take evasive action at the drop of a hat, emulating the drivers in the BMW advertisements - this is how they convince themselves they didn't get ripped off.
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Neal Stephenson |
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fe7b5ef
|
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.
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Neal Stephenson |
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19f6eae
|
The basic problem for Lawrence was that he was lazy. He had figured out that everything was much simpler if, like Superman with his X-ray vision, you just stared through the cosmetic distractions and saw the underlying mathematical skeleton. Once you found the math in a thing, you knew everything about it, and you could manipulate it to your heart's content with nothing more than a pencil and a napkin. He saw it in the curve of the silver b..
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Neal Stephenson |
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46858dd
|
Her skirts, sleeves, collar, and hat saw to it that none of the young ruffians of the Leased Territories would have the opportunity to invade her body space with their eyes, and lest her distinctive face prove too much of a temptation, she wore a veil too... The veil offered Nell protection from unwanted scrutiny. Many New Atlantis career women also used the veil as a way of meeting the world on their own terms, ensuring that they were judg..
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burqa
headscarf
niqab
veil
hijab
|
Neal Stephenson |
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73017f8
|
I mean, who wants to be the fucking goddess of macrame?
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Neal Stephenson |
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1782bed
|
There's a bed, a little fold-out table, and cabinets made of actual wood. These in combination with the photographs of family and friends give it a cozy, domestic flavor which is, however, completely ruined by the framed picture of Adolf Hitler on the wall. Waterhouse finds this to be shockingly poor taste until he remembers it's a German boat.
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Neal Stephenson |
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e63f558
|
Topology is destiny,' he said, and put the drawers on. One leg at a time.
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Neal Stephenson |
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1db1081
|
in the background she can hear the shopping carts performing their clashy, anal copulations.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7b80d0b
|
Entire sections of them simply cannot be translated - the characters are legible and well-known, but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modern mind." "Like instructions for programming a VCR."
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Neal Stephenson |
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d17b602
|
The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder -- its DNA -- xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a lef- turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines. In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's..
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Neal Stephenson |
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e47fe50
|
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."
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Neal Stephenson |
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d7f6215
|
You mentioned . . . one of the two great labyrinths into which the mind is drawn. What . . . is the other?" "The other is the composition of the continuum, or: what is space?"
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|
space
question
|
Neal Stephenson |
|
675f713
|
It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out the equations that govern their movement; it is boring to use those principles to design electric can openers. From here on out, it's all can openers.
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|
science
engineering
|
Neal Stephenson |
|
95aa1da
|
The room contains a few dozen living human bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding, and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with..
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Neal Stephenson |
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83b3eb9
|
the insects here see you as a big slab of animated but not very well defended food. The ability to move, far from being a deterrent, serves as an unforgeable guarantee of freshness.
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Neal Stephenson |
|
593f40b
|
I had to ride slow because I was taking my guerrilla route, the one I follow when I assume that everyone in a car is out to get me. My nighttime attitude is, anyone can run you down and get away with it. Why give some drunk the chance to plaster me against a car? That's why I don't even own a bike light, or one of those godawful reflective suits. Because if you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to b..
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Neal Stephenson |
|
76b7e69
|
I have devoted much effort, during the last decade or so, to the systematic encouragement of subversiveness.
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|
Neal Stephenson |