The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Quotes

“The kind of woman who could pleasantly instruct you to fuck off, dear, and you immediately would because you’d just hate to disappoint her.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“I made it into Wikipedia,” sang Erszebet. “I’ll bet none of my enemies ever made it into Wikipedia.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Reader, if you don’t know what a database is, rest assured that an explanation of the concept would in no way increase your enjoyment in reading this account.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“The Fourth Crusade was an epic clusterfuck a comic-opera misadventure a tragic saga with farcical elements.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“While that thing was on, we ran a ridiculous amount of data through our servers.” “How much?” I asked. He looked exasperated. “Enough that I could make up some kind of strained analogy involving the contents of the Library of Congress and the number of pixels in all of the Lord of the Rings movies put together and how many phone calls the NSA intercepts in a single day and you would be like, ‘Holy shit, that’s a lot.’” “Holy shit, that’s a lot!” I exclaimed dutifully.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that,” Tristan said, and finally sat down again. “It’s the dog that didn’t bark.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Modern people are calibrated for a whole different level of danger acceptance.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“When you just wing it, you are aware of the risk and the uncertainty, and inclined to be more cautious. When you have a high-tech tool giving you an illusion of omniscience, I am concerned that it will lead to greater risk-taking. LYONS:”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“The conventionally accepted explanation for this is that storytellers have a power of imagination that makes them good at inventing counterfactual narratives. In the light of everything we’ve learned about Strands at DODO, however, we can now see an alternate explanation, which is that storytellers are doing a kind of low-level magic. Their “superpower” isn’t imagining counterfactuals, but rather seeing across parallel Strands and perceiving things that actually did (or might) happen in alternate versions of reality.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“As the saying goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Insubordinate/undisciplined witch—murders colleagues, not on board with mission objectives, declines to disclose functionality”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“which is that storytellers are doing a kind of low-level magic. Their “superpower” isn’t imagining counterfactuals, but rather seeing across parallel Strands and perceiving things that actually did (or might) happen in alternate versions of reality.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Is it Protestant money or Catholic money you’re after?” I ask. “It does not matter,” he says. “Not where I come from.” “Where in God’s name do you come from?” I ask again. “May I go there with you? Because in the name of Our Lord’s mammy, if I could be someplace where money’s got no religion and religion’s got no money, I’d be a happier woman.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“He nodded. “When the shutter opened to capture that first perfect image of the eclipse, magic ceased to function across all human societies.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“I’ll be honest with you: as a physicist, I am a hack,” he admitted. “I majored in it, yes, but I was never employed in that capacity. But if you cut me I still bleed physicist blood. I’ll go to my grave believing that, if magic existed, there’s a scientific explanation for it.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“There’s an office?” I said. “I assumed your shadowy government entity had you working out of your car.” “It’s near Central Square. Carlton Street, about fifteen minutes’ walk from the Apostolic Café. How’s Chinese sound?” “Depends on the dialect.” “Ha,” he said without smiling. “Linguist humor. Pretty lame, Stokes.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“The QUIPUs (Quantum Information Processing Units) that make up the Chronotron are capable of dealing with the infinite-pasts-as-weighted-by-plausibility calculations in SLIT (Something Less Than Infinite Time).”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“In layperson’s terms: if it has to be dunked in liquid helium to work, I don’t understand it. If it’s in a rack with fans blowing on it, that’s a different story.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Hamlet’s a dull fuck of a story where a fellow stands around lamenting how useless he is even to his own self, and then there’s one pansy swordfight and it’s over. The only good part of that is what he nicked from Kit’s Dido.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“They are probably now either archived or expunged. If I don’t escape from 1851 within the next three weeks, I will never know which.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“—IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE IN A SWORDFIGHT— This comes up a lot and I am working on upgrading the relevant wiki pages, but people seem to end up here anyway LOL. My basic advice: DON’T DO IT! It is ridiculously, fantastically dangerous. Modern people are calibrated for a whole different level of danger acceptance.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“I love the scent of a man under pressure.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“with the perky vigor of a man who had sat through one too many free webinars about the importance of networking.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Consciousness—the here-and-now of the human mind—is linked to the body’s surroundings by a thousand strands, most of which we’re never aware of until all of them are severed.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“I was going to kill that doctor when he shoved his finger up my ass but then I realized the possibilities of that substance.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Zipper the Fatlanders called it. Cock-catcher it was to Hunfast, the hapless.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Frink and Blevins had an uber-mission (I wonder, shall it seem antiquated or inconceivable, if these words are ever brought to light?).”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“TL;DR: I got recruited out of a park to prevent Tristan from getting his ass kicked in a swordfight and they found out I was a CS major.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“GENERAL FRINK: Madame Chairwoman, if I may? ATKINSON: Proceed. FRINK: With all due respect, Senator Villesca, it’s not like taxpayer money has never been used to hire prostitutes before. I know you’re aware of that.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

“Right, by tomorrow morning everyone will have congregated in Le Havre and you can all pile in the car and come back out here together," said Tristan in a rapid monotone, as if needing to rationalize being along with me overnight as nothing more than a matter of logistics.

DEAR READER: It was not a matter of logistics.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.