Quote

One of the problems, hanging out with me, is that I can turn any topic into a toxic horror story. I've lost two girlfriends and a job by reading an ingredients label out loud, with annotations, at the wrong time.

Neal Stephenson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Neal Stephenson
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 31
Author
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Camp Annapolis Junction
Neal Town Stephenson
Stephen Bury
Time
Wrong
Ingredients
Turns
Girlfriend
Annotation
Story
Labels
Girlfriends
Jobs
Loud
Topic
Lost
Horror
Toxic
Two
Problems
Topics
Stories
Turn
Label
Problem
Reading
Hanging

More quotes by Neal Stephenson

Image
...your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.
Neal Stephenson
Image
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
Image
I was trying to run something to ground that had come to my attention when I was working on the Baroque Cycle. That series, of course, was about the conflict between Newton and Leibniz. Leibniz developed a system of metaphysics called monadology, which looked pretty weird at the time and was promptly buried by Newtonian-style physics.
Neal Stephenson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the paper tape, and your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.
Neal Stephenson
Image
Clearly Mr. Drkh has had a long career of being the weirdest person in any given room, but he's about to go down in flames.
Neal Stephenson
Image
Unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history.
Neal Stephenson
Image
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
Image
How could your cover be blown in Canada? Why even bother going dark there? How could you tell?
Neal Stephenson
Image
You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake.
Neal Stephenson
Image
Most countries are static, all 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
Image
It would be quite unusual for me to get deep into a project and then shitcan it. One of the advantages of having done this for a while is that I have a better sense than I used to of when something is or isn't working. Until I developed that sense, this was a pretty dicey career for me, both in terms of paying the rent, and emotional wear and tear.
Neal Stephenson
Image
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
Image
And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.
Neal Stephenson
Image
When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.
Neal Stephenson
Image
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
Image
If you are a professional writer - i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed - Emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter it simply makes everything else vanish.
Neal Stephenson
Image
Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion? Juanita shrugs. What's the difference?
Neal Stephenson