Reamde

by Neal Stephenson

An autodidact. Anything that was technical, that was logical, that ran according to rules, Peter could figure out. And knew it. Didn’t bother to ask for help. So much quicker to work it out on his own than suffer through someone’s well-meaning efforts to educate him—and to forge an emotional connection with him in so doing.

Not too loudly, he announced, “I’m going into town,” which meant that he was going to Walmart.

She and John had four children, but precisely because they’d done such an excellent job raising them, these had all moved away to do important things in big cities (it being the permanent, ongoing tragedy of Iowa that her well-brought-up young were obliged to flee the state in order to find employment worthy of their qualities).

Reader, they bought his IP.

We can’t send people’s characters to virtual Hell.”