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Most of the brain's work is done while the brain's owner is ostensibly thinking about something else, so sometimes you have to deliberately find something else to think and talk about.
Neal Stephenson
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Neal Stephenson
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 31
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Science Fiction Writer
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Camp Annapolis Junction
Neal Town Stephenson
Stephen Bury
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Brain
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More quotes by Neal Stephenson
I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor.
Neal Stephenson
Any strategy that involves crossing a valley accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.
Neal Stephenson
Am I a technocrat? Im just a guy who went down to the bookstore and bought a couple of textbooks on TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocol of the Internet, and read them. And then I signed on to a computer, which anyone can do nowadays, and I messed around with it for a few years, and now I know all about it. Does that make me a technocrat?
Neal Stephenson
Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whisky, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.
Neal Stephenson
Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?' Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.
Neal Stephenson
The less attractive the character, the more I enjoyed writing them. Officious bureaucrats and PowerPoint weasels are where it's at for me.
Neal Stephenson
So, you're worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?
Neal Stephenson
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.
Neal Stephenson
Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.
Neal Stephenson
That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.
Neal Stephenson
... when I saw any of those kinds of beauty I knew I was alive, and not just in the sense that when I hit my thumb with a hammer I knew I was alive, but rather in the sense that I was partaking of something--something was passing through me that it was in my nature to be a part of.
Neal Stephenson
How could your cover be blown in Canada? Why even bother going dark there? How could you tell?
Neal Stephenson
This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research.
Neal Stephenson
Unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history.
Neal Stephenson
Whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.
Neal Stephenson
It is what you don't expect... that most needs looking for.
Neal Stephenson
That's funny because if anyone actually did prove the existence of God we'd just tell him 'nice proof, Fraa Bly' and start believing in God.
Neal Stephenson
The story is everything, so it always begins with a story.And research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much.
Neal Stephenson
They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.
Neal Stephenson
Hiro is a talented drifter. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. But in the bleak light of full adulthood, which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night, he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed.
Neal Stephenson
