Quote

You don't want your readers seeing easy connections it becomes a distraction.

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
Readers
Connections
Reader
Becomes
Seeing
Easy
Distraction

More quotes by Neal Stephenson

Image
Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs, I said. We have a protractor.
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
That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.
Neal Stephenson
Image
The science fiction approach doesn't mean it's always about the future it's an awareness that this is different.
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
I just assume I'm not invisible. I assume I'm wearing fluorescent clothes, and there's a million-dollar bounty going to the first driver who manages to hit me. And I ride on that assumption.
Neal Stephenson
Image
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
Image
It is what you don't expect... that most needs looking for.
Neal Stephenson
Image
As convenient as it is for information to come to us, libraries do have a valuable side effect: they force all of the smart people to come together in one place where they can interact with one another.
Neal Stephenson
Image
... 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
Image
That to me is the basic message of events like the rise of Nazism, the Salem witch trials, and so on: not that bad people do bad things, but that good people do bad things.
Neal Stephenson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I think visual literacy and media literacy is not without value, but I think plain old-fashioned text literacy and mathematical literacy are much more powerful and flexible ways to organize your mind.
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
Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.
Neal Stephenson
Image
I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor.
Neal Stephenson
Image
When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.
Neal Stephenson
Image
If you sincerely believed in God, how could you form one thought, speak one sentence, without mentioning Him?
Neal Stephenson