Quotes by Neal Stephenson

About Neal Stephenson:

Neal Town Stephenson is an award-winning American writer and game designer known for his works of speculative fiction.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Because, Jack, you volunteered to be taken down into eternal torment in place of her. This is the absolute (unless I'm mistaken) that any female requires from her man.

Neal Stephenson

The Bibliotheque du Roi then gives you the closest thing that currently exists to God's understanding of the world." "And yet with a bigger library we could come ever so much closer.

Neal Stephenson

If money is a science, then it is a dark science...it has gone on developing...by its own rules

Neal Stephenson

. . . if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago, and has gone on developing ever since, by its own rules.

Neal Stephenson

This is fantastically squalid," said Milo. "We may never get out of here alive.

Neal Stephenson

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?

Neal Stephenson

Talent is useful, but always keep your dagger sharp.

Neal Stephenson

I had to ride my bike to and from their god damn plant way up north in the high-chemical crime district, and reachable only by riding on the shoulder of some major freeways. I could feel the years ticking off my life expectancy as the mile markers st...

Neal Stephenson

If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a fuck - you've already blown it.

Neal Stephenson

Debbie insisted on following the rhythm of the waves. Typical duck-squeezer sex: slow, frustrating, in-tune with nature.

Neal Stephenson

It is the fate of operating systems to become free.

Neal Stephenson

Once a person has all the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment.

Neal Stephenson

Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.

Neal Stephenson

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent.

Neal Stephenson

Most countries are static, and they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.

Neal Stephenson

One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for may people, is not that he's socially inept - because everybody's been there - but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.

Neal Stephenson

The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.

Neal Stephenson

[The thief-taker] was conspicuous by his age, I should estimate he is in his middle fifties, and by a bearing, I am tempted to call it dignity, wanting in the others. He has a good head of hair, only a bit thin on top, blond going grey, and sea green...

Neal Stephenson

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.

Neal Stephenson

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 w...

Neal Stephenson

Unix is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic: a living body of narrative that many people know by heart, and tell over and over again—making their own personal embel...

Neal Stephenson

Author Bio

  • NameNeal Stephenson
  • DescriptionAmerican science fiction writer
  • BornOctober 31, 1959
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • AwardsPrometheus Award - Hall Of Fame