Termination Shock Quotes

“trying to get Dutch people to prepare for disasters was a little like trying to get English people to watch football on the telly or Americans to buy guns.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Get the bicycles.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“He keeps an axe in his attic.” “Everyone does,”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Like every other state-of-the-art conference room AV system in the history of the world, it failed to work on the first go and so it was necessary to summon someone who understood how it worked; and like all such persons he could not be found.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“There was an odd bending around in back at the extreme limits of culture and politics where back-to-the-land hippies and radical survivalists ended up being the same people, since they spent 99 percent of their lives doing the same stuff.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“In the distant past, kings had shown the world that they meant it by strapping on a sword and riding into war, putting their lives on the line. Getting behind the controls of a plane and pointing it at a runway was as close as one could reasonably come in the modern world to the same public blood oath.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. I been holed up in this place long enough.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“The next morning the Fellowship, now filled out to a Tolkien-compliant head count of nine, simply walked”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“People were expensive; the way to display, or to enjoy, great wealth was to build an environment that could only have been wrought, and could only be sustained from one hour to the next, by unceasing human effort.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“You can’t just admit you need me and pretend that makes a difference,” Saskia said. “You have to listen.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“The thing is that growing a lot of trees, or algae, or what have you, would also have such knock-on effects. These of course can be simulated by the same computer models. And they would unquestionably be different since it is a different scheme from Dr. Schmidt’s. But there is absolutely no basis for supposing that they would be globally better.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Saskia had seen the umbrellas before. Security personnel used them to shield VIPs from the prying eyes of camera drones and long-lens paparazzi.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Four bus drivers had gathered at one table to vape and play dominoes. Service workers wiped tables and sprayed insecticide.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“He had the notion he’d make everything ready during the wee hours, then catch a couple of hours of shut-eye, setting his alarm for a four a.m. departure. Then he realized he had no way of setting an alarm. All his timepieces were electronic. He had never owned a mechanical clock or watch in his life. If he had a star chart, he’d be able to estimate the time from the elevations of astronomical bodies, but you couldn’t do that while you were asleep. And the only way he knew to obtain a star chart was to download it from the Internet.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Sometimes, when a lot happened at once, time got compressed, or something, and then it had to relax to bring the universe back into balance.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“From time to time a moral panic would arise concerning the sort of online content to which unsuspecting children were being algorithmically exposed, but it was always something to do with sex, violence, or politics. All important in their way, but mostly preoccupations of city dwellers.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Despite carrying a tribal ID card, he had always refrained from calling himself a Comanche. It seemed presumptuous, and it put him at risk of being called a Pretendian, which was absolutely not a label you ever wanted”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“the Chickasaws lived farthest west in what we now call Oklahoma. Which put them right up against the Comancheria. The lands of the Comanches. The most powerful and feared of all the tribes that ever was.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“And I have the vehicle to go with it,” Willem said. “A generic white pickup.” “Oh, you can get in anywhere with that and a reflective vest!”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“There was an old joke about a man who is driving somewhere with an accordion in the back of his car. He parks the car outside a diner in a sketchy part of town and goes in for dinner. When he comes out he sees that the rear window of his car has been smashed out. He runs up to it and discovers that, while he wasn’t looking, some miscreant has thrown a second accordion in there and made a clean getaway. During Rufus’s past life trying to operate a farm, he’d learned that this actually explained a lot about farm and ranch life. As soon as someone found out you had fifty acres, they’d remember”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Debris of beer cans, Subway wrappers, and chip bags attested to the fact that Jules, by dint of youth, good genes, and an active lifestyle, could consume as many calories as he pleased with zero impact on the eminently fuckable physique on display through his tie-dyed tank top and his voluminous cargo shorts.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“This place, however, was about permanence. Permanence, and uniqueness. Every detail custom-built of polished old wood, wrought iron, sculpted marble. Original works of art wherever some decoration was wanted, living flowers arranged by human hands. That human effort immanent in every detail. Napkins folded just so, drinks hand-shaken and served with origami twists of citrus rind. People were expensive; the way to display, or to enjoy, great wealth was to build an environment that could only have been wrought, and could only be sustained from one hour to the next, by unceasing human effort.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“The Comanches were originally Shoshones who had come down out of the north speaking a language that, of course, had no word for “pig.” When they had encountered this alien species in what was now Texas, they’d had to invent a new term for them. The term was muubi pooro. Different bands of Comanches pronounced it in slightly different ways. The first of those words meant “nose” and the second meant something like a “tool” or a “weapon.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“A hybrid of unusual size”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“There had been no drones shadowing him in Canada, but apparently the United States was a different story. It was, as all the world knew, a completely insane and out-of-hand country, unable to control itself.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Debris of beer cans, Subway wrappers, and chip bags attested to the fact that Jules, by dint of youth, good genes, and an active lifestyle, could consume as many calories as he pleased with zero impact on the eminently fuckable physique on display”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Rufus would have the boss’s undivided attention for three hours, after which there would be something called a “hard stop.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Even if we could get China and India to stop burning shit tomorrow, and crash their economies for the sake of Mother Earth,” T.R. said, “it wouldn’t undo what we’ve done, as a civilization, to the atmosphere since we first worked out how to turn fossil fuel into work.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“Actually wrangling eagles was not a thing that he was ever going to learn. It was a whole world of fussy veterinary procedures, weird social man/bird interaction, and messing around with small dead raw animals that did not appeal to him and that he never would have become good at.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock

“the comments thread dangling from the end of this video like a string of fecal material from a yak’s ass hairs.”
― Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock