Quotessence
Home / Authors / Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleWayIfsWorldThinkingKindMindKnowsLittlesTwoPersonsSaidStoriesYearsIdeasMenNeedsTryingWritingBook

Famous Neal Stephenson Quotes

“What writers of fantasy, science fiction, and much historical fiction do for a living is different from what writers of so-called literary or other kinds of fiction do. The name of the game in F/SF/HF is creating fictional worlds and then telling particular stories set in those worlds. If you're doing it right, then the reader, coming to the end of the story, will say, "Hey, wait a minute, there are so many other stories that could be told in this universe!" And that's how we get the sprawling, coherent fictional universes that fandom is all about.”

IfsWorldKindDifferentEndsStoriesUniverseGamesNamesWaitingFictionFantasyMinutesParticularReaderCreatingScience FictionHistoricalHeyHistorical FictionFandomsFictional Worlds
Author:Neal Stephenson
Create image

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”

IfsThinkingMenWorldYearsArtStillsRealHardFiveStreetsCrimeCircumstancesDrugTenDiseaseMy FamilyTwentiesMovedChinaRevengeMartial ArtsDevotedDealerTwenty FiveMonasteriesDrug DealersBeing BadWiping Out
Author:Neal Stephenson
Create image

“The GPS unit became almost equally obstreperous, though, over Richard’s unauthorized route change, until they finally passed over some invisible cybernetic watershed between two possible ways of getting to their destination, and it changed its fickle little mind and began calmly telling him which way to proceed as if this had been its idea all along.”

IfsWayMindLittlesTwoIdeasChangedInvisibleDestinationUnitsRoutesFickleLittle MindsGpsWatersheds
Book:Reamde
Create image

“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.”

IfsWantFeelsEndsFeelingsCertainReadingNaturalLossInterestingCommonNovelCommunicationCircumstancesConversationDirectContactCorrespondingWavelengthLetdownsInteresting Conversation
Author:Neal Stephenson
Create image

“Of course, the underlying structure of everything in England is posh. There is no in-between with these people. You have to walk a mile to find a telephone booth, but when you find it, it is built as if the senseless dynamiting of pay phones had been a serious problem at some time in the past. And a British mailbox can presumably stop a German tank.”

PeopleIfsProblemPastCoursesWalksPaySeriousBuiltEnglandStructurePhonesBritishMilesTelephonesTanksPoshMailboxes
Author:Neal Stephenson
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingWayHardHelpingUseYoungPurposeOne ThingGoes OnLet MeCornersStoresWanderColleaguesHardwareClerksHubrisHard WayBackpackingHassle
Author:Neal Stephenson
Create image