Neal Stephenson Quotes

Enjoy the top 658 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Neal Stephenson.

“Gold is gold everywhere, fungible and indifferent. But when a disk of gold is stamped by a coiner with certain pompous words and the picture of a King, it takes on added value
seigneurage. It has that value only in that people believe that it does
it is a shared phantsy.”
— Neal Stephenson —

“The answer is, I chose to seek my fortune. Failed. Lost all. Then got a fortune I had not ever looked for. Lost it though. Got it back. Lost it. Got another - the story is somewhat repetitious.”

— Neal Stephenson

“There is an English expression: 'high-maintenance girlfriend,'" Csongor remarked. "Now, of course, Zula is not my girlfriend. Probably never would be, even if all this shit were not happening. And I think that if she were my girlfriend? She would not be high maintenance at all! She is just not that type of girl. However. Because of circumstances, today she is the most high-maintenance girlfriend since Cleopatra.”

— Neal Stephenson

“We're like meridians, all beginning and ending in the same place. We spread out from the beginning and go our separate ways, over seas and mountains and islands and deserts, each telling our own story, as different as they could possibly be. But in the end we all converge and our ends are as much the same as our beginnings.”

— Neal Stephenson

They were a bit like English taverns, which had effigies instead of names, so that people like Jack, who could not read, could know them.

— Neal Stephenson

“On the kitchen table a MakerBot was producing a small plastic part, watched intently by a young woman who was talking on her phone in a mix of English and Mandarin.”

— Neal Stephenson

“The businessman turns out to have a lot of zanshin. Translating this concept into English is like translating "fuckface" into Nipponese, but it might translate into "emotional intensity" in football lingo.”

— Neal Stephenson