Neal Stephenson Quotes

It's easy to be a short-term hero. It is very easy for me to get tremendous results very short term, get that translated into compensation, and be off sailing in the Bahamas. But the goal for this company - and it's very difficult to do - the goal is to follow a four- or five-year process.

I want to take a long-term view. Being distracted by short term things can be dangerous when you are making cold, calm, long-term decisions.

It's the whole big picture that we have to look at to create an organization that wins over the long term. And to just shoot from the hip on a decision based on winning over a 10-game period. No, that doesn't make sense.

We have a tendency in America to deal with foreign affairs on a day by day basis. We are so saturated with facts that we do no look at a longer, broader picture.

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy, golden storm, yes many loved before us, I know we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it's come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I have lost friends, some by death...others by sheer inability to cross the street.

Sometimes I do have something in my head. But, for me, I think it usually ends up being about considering all of the elements, and trying to understand the distance from where we are to where we want to go.

Most organizations only focus on WHAT they do and HOW they do it - tactics and strategies - and they aren't even aware that this thing called the WHY exists. Focusing on only two pieces of a three piece puzzle leaves an organization, or a career, inherently out of balance. Being out of balance, only operating on two of the three pieces, shows up in different ways - increased stress, loss of passion, obsession with what your competition is doing, being forced to play the price game, trouble differentiating. These are all signs that the WHY is missing.

Billy wanted me to stay a safe distance from the most important person in my life. It turned out that his concern was, in the end, unnecessary. I was all too safe now.

We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.

You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

Death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.

Abra DeMadrigal didn't look young enough to be my sister anymore. Her sorrow weighed her down and aged her. She was still beautiful, but she looked very far away. No wonder our people had raven eyes, so distant, so sad. No matter how wise she was, my mother looked like a woman who hadn't truely believed how much evil there was in our world. Not until this moment.

Corporate planning cycles are a classic example of generals fighting the last war over again instead of preparing for what might lie ahead.

Karrin smiled faintly and shook her head. "He always said you knew ghosts. You're sure it was really him?" Mort eyed her. "Me and everyone else, yeah." Karrin scowled and stared into the middle distance. Mort frowned and then his expression softened. "You didn't want it to be his ghost. Did you?" Murphy shook her head slowly, but said nothing. "You needed everyone to be wrong about it. Because if it really was his ghost," Mort said, "it means that he really is dead." Murphy's face...just crumpled. Her eyes overflowed and she bowed her head. Her body shook in silence.

Mr Earbrass stands on the terrace at twilight. It is bleak; it is cold; and the virtue has gone out of everything. Words drift through his mind: anguish turnips conjunctions illness defeat string parties no parties urns desuetude disaffection claws loss Trebizond napkins shame stones distance fever Antipodes mush glaciers incoherence labels miasma amputation tides deceit mourning elsewards.

..all I left with was the magnitude of my mistake, of my missing you. And I have to watch you from this distance, watch you achieve your dreams, live what seemed like this perfect life.

It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye.

Now they were as strangers; nay worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart

Red and raw like my heart, pried from your's, the two beating, no longer together, but a thousand miles between them when only yesterday they thumped in unison.

Absence makes the heart grow frozen, not fonder.

I am too far away from what I love and my distance is without remedy.

If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.