“THE MOON BLEW UP WITHOUT WARNING AND FOR NO APPARENT reason.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“any event largely organized by elementary school teachers was likely to come off extremely well from a logistical and crowd-control standpoint.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“The human race might be about to disappear, but not before putting on a two-year frenzy of recreational sex.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“We're not hunter-gatherers anymore. We're all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn't bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It's our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“But I have to warn you that this is the word—‘politics’—that nerds use whenever they feel impatient about the human realities of an organization.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“the federal government needs to be scaled back to a size where he can personally stomp it to death with steel-toed boots.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Old Earthers had focused their intelligence on the small and the soft, not the big and the hard, and built a civilization that was puny and crumbling where physical infrastructure was concerned, but astonishingly sophisticated when it came to networked communications and software.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“As it turned out, imagining the fate of seven billion people was far less emotionally affecting than imagining the fate of one.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Fighting isn’t about knowing how. It’s about deciding to.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Apparently the part of the brain that identified things as funny kept running as a background process even when its contributions were useless.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Being right does not always bring satisfaction,”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“All the people saying mean things about me on the Internet are gonna be dead in four hundred and thirty-three days,” she said, deadpan.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“I have been clinically depressed for most of my life. I once used drugs to fix it. Then I stopped. I stopped because I decided they were making me stupid, and I’d rather be miserable than stupid. I am what I am.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“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.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Then she felt shock and shame over the fact that she was thinking about coffee while her planet was being set on fire.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“It wasn’t just a matter of hiding what you really felt. If you hid your feelings well enough, it actually changed you. A”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“We are just proceeding adaptively to leverage our core competencies.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“But this was how the mind worked. The mind couldn’t think about the End of the World all the time. It needed the occasional break, a romp through the trivial. Because it was through trivia that the mind was anchored in reality, as the largest oak tree was rooted, ultimately, in a system of rootlets no larger than the silver hairs on the president’s head.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“She just didn’t think it decent to live in a place where there were no coffee shops to have breakfast in when she woke up,”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Passing through the utility section she considered getting herself a cup of coffee. Then she felt shock and shame over the fact that she was thinking about coffee while her planet was being set on fire. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee anyway and stepped into the Farm.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“This was governed entirely by Newtonian mechanics. Each piece of the moon attracted every other piece more or less strongly depending on its mass and its distance. It could be simulated on a computer quite easily. The whole rubble cloud was gravitationally bound. Any shrapnel fast enough to escape had done so already. The rest was drifting around in a loose huddle of rocks. Sometimes they banged into one another. Eventually they would stick together and the moon would begin to re-form.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Izzy was full of people who were skewed toward the Asperger’s end of the social spectrum, and there was no better way to get them to start talking than to ask them a technical question.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals—something”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“He was tempted to park the SUV illegally, since, according to his calculations, the authorities were not likely to catch up with him and demand payment of the parking ticket before the end of the world, but it seemed that most of the people of Seattle were still obeying the rules and so he did likewise.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“But Henry wasn’t a parent, and he didn’t understand that when you were, almost nothing was more satisfying than seeing your kid sleep.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“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.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Every parent of a teenager gets used to it: the moment in a child’s life when he or she decides that certain facts are just too much trouble to explain to Mom or Dad. The parents can’t, and needn’t, know every last little thing. They just have to accept this, be content with what they can glean on their own, and move on.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Earth looked as if some god had attacked it with a welder’s torch, slashing away at it and leaving thin trails of incandescence.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
“Felt-tip markers, always a scarce resource even on Earth, became objects of great value as people used them to mark directions on the walls of hamster tubes and habitat modules.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Seveneves
Neal Stephenson
Born place: in Fort Meade, MD, The United States
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“I was trying to decide what to give you for Christmas.”
Slowly, Kat slipped closer. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I was thinking a jet. That way you could stop borrowing mine.”
“Jets are nice,” Kat said. “I also like candy. And I need socks.”
“Okay.” Hale gave her The Smile again “Jets. Candy. Socks. I’ll make a note.”
― Ally Carter, quote from The Grift of the Magi
“Your separateness could kill you unless I take it from you as a sickness.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
“Hot, bright heat filled him like some ecstatic poison, and Hartan's pony shied in terror as a wordless howl burst from his throat. His dripping ears were flat to his skull, fire crackled in his brown eyes, his huge sword blurred in a whirring figure eight before him, and the brigand running at him gawked in sudden panic. The raider's feet skidded in mud as he tried to brake, but it was far too late. He was face-to-face with the worst nightmare of any Norfressan, a Horse Stealer hradani in the grip of the Rage, and a thunderbolt of steel split him from crown to navel.”
― David Weber, quote from Oath of Swords
“After that, we don’t talk, instead we get hammered. Shot after shot we down, chasing each one with a Little Debbie snack. Before we know it, we’re hanging on to the bar counter floating around in a sugar and alcohol coma, just the way I like it.
“There’s my girl,” Racer shouts as he topples off his stool and onto the floor, laughing hysterically. Georgie stops in her tracks and looks over at Emma, who’s standing next to her, both holding two boxes of Little Debbie snacks each.
“Emmmmmmmma,” Tucker drags out, waving his glass in the air. “You brought the snacks.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Emma mutters as she approaches us.
I point to my mouth and say, “Feed me. Daddy needs sugar.”
Racer is beside me, tangled in the pegs of his bar stool, still laughing. “Did you bring Oatmeal Pies, George? Please tell me you have the pies.”
“Uh, I think you’ve had enough for tonight,” she says, looking down at her boyfriend.
“Never!” Racer struggles to get up and finally knocks the chair over to free himself. “Fucking bitch chair, digging into me with its claws.” Talking to the stool directly he says, “I’m taken, warm someone else’s ass.”
“He’s going to propose, chair, leave him alone,” Tucker announces, causing me to cringe.
“Dude, don’t say it out loud.” I punch Tucker in the shoulder. “Georgie is right there.” All three of us turn to Georgie, who’s shaking her head in humor. Hopefully.
“I’ll take Aaron,” Emma tells Georgie. “Seems like Racer is more of a handful.”
“Hell yeah, I am.” Racer stumbles while cupping his crotch. “A giant handful.”
Georgie rolls her eyes. “And that’s our cue to leave.”
“But we didn’t eat our snacks.”
“Seems like you had enough.” Georgie grabs Racer by the hand. “Come on.”
As they walk away, Racer asks, “Want to have sex in the car?”
“Not even a little.”
“Here, you two, you can have your boxes of snacks.” Emma hands Tucker and me both a box of Oatmeal Pies that we clutch to our chests.
“You’re the best,” I admit.
“She is, isn’t she?” Tucker says. “I love her so fucking hard. Best wife ever.”
She pulls on both of our hands to get us moving. “She wins wife of the year award,” I announce. “Best wife goes to Emma. Can we get a round of applause?”
Tucker breaks open his Oatmeal Pies and starts spraying them like confetti. “Emma. Emma. Emma.” He chants, getting the three other patrons in the bar to join in.
I pump my fist as well, forgetting everything from earlier. I knew I could count on my guys.
“Emma. Emma. Emma . . .”
And then, everything fades to black. Emotions and feelings are non-existent as I pass out, just the way I like it. Just the way I need it.”
― Meghan Quinn, quote from The Other Brother
“It was much smaller than her own, but everyone seemed closer, as if each member were organically attached to one seamless body, whereas her enormous extended family felt like cheerfully mismatched Lego bricks in a large bucket.”
― Min Jin Lee, quote from Pachinko
Hallowed
Only Forward
Cut
Rilla of Ingleside
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