Isis > Isis's Quotes

“As for monkeys, I would have five, and they would be named: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Do Pretty Much Whatever The Hell You Want, and Expensive Attorney.”
― Tad Williams

“He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.”
― Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair

“The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. ”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”
― Neal Stephenson

“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.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“I just saved your fucking life, Mom. . . . You could at least offer me an Oreo.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“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, Quicksilver

“She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not supposed to understand her. That's not what she's after.... She doesn't want you to understand her. She knows that's impossible. She just wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“I don't even want you to nod, that's how much you annoy me. Just freeze and shut up.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“Let's set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Ronald Reagan has a stack of three-by-five cards in his lap. He skids up a new one: "What advice do you, as the youngest American fighting man ever to win both the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, have for any young marines on their way to Guadalcanal?"

Shaftoe doesn't have to think very long. The memories are still as fresh as last night's eleventh nighmare: ten plucky Nips in Suicide Charge!

"Just kill the one with the sword first."

"Ah," Reagan says, raising his waxed and penciled eyebrows, and cocking his pompadour in Shaftoe's direction. "Smarrrt--you target them because they're the officers, right?"

"No, fuckhead!" Shaftoe yells. "You kill 'em because they've got fucking swords! You ever had anyone running at you waving a fucking sword?”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“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, Snow Crash

“Boredom is a mask frustration wears.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“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, Anathem

“That's funny because if anyone actually did prove the existence of God we'd just tell him 'nice proof, Fraa Bly' and start believing in God.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“The best way to know someone is to have a conversation with them.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Nell did not imagine that Constable Moore wanted to get into a detailed discussion of recent events, so she changed the subject. "I think I have finally worked out what you were trying to tell me, years ago, about being intelligent," she said.

The Constable brightened all at once. "Pleased to hear it."

The Vickys have an elaborate code of morals and conduct. It grew out of the moral squalor of an earlier generation, just as the original Victorians were preceded by the Georgians and the Regency. The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code– but their children believe it for entirely different reasons."

They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated to believe it."

Yes. Some of them never challenge it– they grow up to be smallminded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel– as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw."

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, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.”
― William Ralph Inge

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”
― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“That which yields is not always weak.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“I am the discoverer of Quantum Editing, the process whereby the amateur editor keeps being changed by the editing he does, requiring him to further edit the manuscript, changing him yet further, etc.”
― Matt Chatelain

“Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves

“Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary