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Neal Stephenson

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Famous Neal Stephenson Quotes

“In the case of Anathem, most of the research had to do with philosophy and metaphysics. Reading this sort of thing has never been my strong suit, so I actually had to be somewhat more "organized and results-driven" than is my habit. I just made up my mind that I was going to have to read some of these philosophy tomes, and I forced myself to read something like 10 pages a day until I had bashed my way through them.”

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Author:Neal Stephenson
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“Early on, I settled on the first-person strategy as a way to deal with exposition and world-description issues. As long as the book is, it could have been far longer had I gone with an omniscient third-person narrator, or multiple point-of-view characters, since either of those would have enabled me to impart much more detailed information about the history and geography of the world.”

WorldWayFirstsPersonsLongHas BeensBookCharacterViewsDealsGoneIssuesInformationThirdsStrategyPoint Of ViewDescriptionMultipleCould Have BeenGeographyFirst PersonImpartNarratorsOmniscientThird Person
Author:Neal Stephenson
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“Whenever I get distracted or bored, my eyes wander over to that chalkboard and I read the words. Some of them grow on me, and others annoy me. I attack the latter with eraser and chalk, and keep nudging at them until I like the way they look and sound. Others never make the cut at all and simply get erased. Perhaps one day I will sell these on eBay to RPG players who need names for characters or alien races.”

WayNeedsLooksCharacterEyeNamesGrowsSoundRaceCuttingPlayerOne DaySellsWanderAliensBoredLatterAnnoyingDistractedChalkEbayErasersChalkboardsRpgs
Author:Neal Stephenson
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“Let's set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate.”

WayNeedsTryingMeanSelfUniverseFoundExistenceForeverIssuesEnvironmentPlanetsDirectLegacyRoughCopiesVolumeOrganismsExistence Of God
Book:Cryptonomicon
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“..this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way to get out of it is to quit, cut loose, take a flyer, and go off into the wicked world, where you will be swallowed up and never heard from again.”

PeopleWorldWayOrderCuttingAliveHeardStupidPercentQuittingWickedMeaninglessPointlessStaying AliveBabblingFlyersWicked World
Author:Neal Stephenson
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“They wanted to carry her, but she jumped to the stones of the plaza and strode away from the building, toward her ranks, which parted to make way for her. The streets of Pudong were filled with hungry and terrified refugees, and through them, in simple peasant clothes streaked with the blood of herself and of others, broken shackles dangling from her wrists, followed by her generals and ministers, walked the barbarian Princess with her book and her sword.”

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Book:The Diamond Age
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“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
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“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.”

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Author:Neal Stephenson
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“The imperative to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale no longer seems like the childish preoccupation of a few nerds with slide rulers - It's the only way for the human race to escape from its current predicaments - Too bad we've forgotten how to do it”

WayInspirationalHumansSeemsRaceTechnologyForgottenCurrentsScalesHuman RaceHeroicRulersNerdImperativesSlidesNew TechnologyPreoccupationPredicaments
Book:Some Remarks
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