Neal Stephenson

It would be easier,” Doob said, “if I could figure out what the hell she wanted.” “You’re assuming,” Luisa said, “that she has a plan. I doubt that she does. She is driven to seek power. She finds some way to do that and then backfills a rationalization for it afterward.

He had a sense of irony that ruled his life, made it impossible for him to use his considerable brains in any kind of serious job. Kind of like me.

One of the insights of the Victorian Revival was that it was not necessarily a good thing for everyone to read a completely different newspaper in the morning; so the higher one rose in the society, the more similar one's Times became to one's peers'.

It appeared that way, Lawrence, but this raised the question of was mathematics really true or was it just a game played with symbols? In other words — are we discovering Truth, or just wanking?

Corvallis took to the air and went for a spin on some tempting thermals while the visitors were shown in... He had known them now for forty years and resigned himself to the fact that their appearance did not change over time. He wheeled around them anyway, peering down on them from all angles.
“Calling a meeting of the Societas Eruditorum?” C-plus asked.
“You’re the only member left."

Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.

Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy... Because they were hypocrites, the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefarious conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none.

Topology is destiny,' he said, and put the drawers on. One leg at a time.

Maybe we should go back and get their guns,” Marlon suggested. “That’s how it would work in a video game,” Csongor said, which was his way of agreeing.

It had been a hell of a long time since he had been reduced to hiding behind a tree, and he did not view it as much of a professional achievement.

any event largely organized by elementary school teachers was likely to come off extremely well from a logistical and crowd-control standpoint.

My men think you are dead now, and won’t waste balls on you,” Jack said. “In fact I have let you live, but for one purpose only: so that you can make your way back to Paris and tell them the following: that the deed you are about to witness was done for a woman, whose name I will not say, for she knows who she is; and that it was done by ‘Half-Cocked’ Jack Shaftoe, L’Emmerdeur, the King of the Vagabonds, Ali Zaybak: Quicksilver!

The qualifications for being a Scout seemed to be a shocking level of physical endurance, a complete disregard for mortal danger, and some knowledge of how to exist in a space suit. All of them were Russian.

Two tires fly. Two Wail.
A bamboo grove, all chopped down
From it, warring songs.

In a manner familiar to anyone who had ever packed a car for a family trip, genial confusion gave way to impatience, then furious ultimatums, then ill-advised snap decisions.