Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephensonis an American writer and game designer known for his works of speculative fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 October 1959
CountryUnited States of America
drive life pizza
But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way. You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line.
figuring fill gave job soldier
For example, there was the day he gave me the job of figuring out how many jellybeans it would take to fill up Soldier Field.
christian atheist intelligent
Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.
wrestling men winning
When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.
use incentives max
Any property that's open to common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it.
frustration boredom mask
Boredom is a mask frustration wears.
meditation everyday kabbalah
Most Kabbalists were theorists who were interested only in pure meditation. But there were so-called 'practical Kabbalists' who tried to apply the power of the Kabbalah in everyday life.
oxygen atmosphere trying
For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.
clutter basements universe
A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.
technology failing cases
It is commonly the case with technologies that you can get the best insight about how they work by watching them fail.
talent ability
Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.
two alternatives compromise
And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.
annoying courses
Technically, of course, he was right. Socially, he was annoying us.
teenage guy narrators
So a lot of what you see in the Baroque Cycle is me wanting to be one of those guys. In the case of Anathem, I needed something that was more formal, less flashy, as if it had been translated from the classical language of another planet, but enlivened with slang terms that a teenage narrator would enjoy throwing around.