Neal Stephenson Quotes

This is brain surgery. Ski masks on my bullets, let 'em commit brain burglary. Emergency, it's an emergency. Someone in all black left the whole scene burgundy.

The gun goes off. I fall.

Another murder I committed made the front page.

Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

It's good they're holding the Olympics in the East End of London. Means the athletes will have to use extra skill to work out which gunshot is the starting pistol.

Someone killed my Mother and my Father and my Sister?" "Yes, someone did." "A Man?" "A Man." "Which means," said Bod, "you're asking the wrong question." Silas raised an eyebrow. "How so?" "Well," said Bod. "If I go outside in the world, the question isn't who will keep me safe from him?" "No?" "No. It's who will keep him safe from me?

Well, usually when a person shakes their head," said McGonagall coldly, "they mean 'no.' So unless Miss Edgecombe is using a form of sign language as yet unknown to humans.

I don't need any crutches in order to concentrate. As a child I learned that you must be ready because I'd be yelled at more than other people and it would always be my fault. I learned that to be professional is your number-one priority. The art comes second. You learn that, in order to give your best performance, you have to be a good technician, which means never allowing negative influences affect your performance.

You all saw him - he had a gun.

Void is when there is absolutely nothing there and the nothing is natural, a complete vacuum. But empty - with empty, you are aware of what's supposed to be there. Empty means something is missing.

Choosing a path means having to miss out on others

There are, fortunately, very few people who can say that they have actually attended a murder.

All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims - the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves.

In firing his gun, John Brown has merely told what time of day it is. It is high noon.

Miss Bennet, I am quite aware of your superior talent for cutting down the Lord's forsaken flock. I merely mean to spare your gown.' Thank you,' said Elizabeth, composing herself, 'but I should rather my gown be soiled than my honor.

I would've asked him to bring a shovel and come to help me dig a body up. That was what a boyfriend should do, right?" -Sookie Stackhouse

If you're going to steal a car, don't steal a mail vehicle. They don't mess around. I mean, have fun, steal all the cars you want, but don't steal a U.S. Mail vehicle.

It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty.

Of course it was a terrible thing, and the world would be a much better place without someone in it who could do that, but did that mean we had to miss lunch?

There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing.

What do you mean "gangsters"? It's business.

The more important point, however, is not about what the money does. It's about what has to be done to get the money. The effect of the money might be (democratically) benign. But what is done to secure that money is not necessarily benign. To miss this point is to betray the Robin Hood fallacy: the fact that the loot was distributed justly doesn't excuse the means taken to secure it.

I wanna get back To the old days When the phone would ring And I knew it was you I wanna talk back And get yelled at Fight for nothing Like we used to Oh kiss me Like you mean it Like you miss me Cuz I know you do I wanna get back, get back I wanna get back, get back I wanna get back, get back Get Back

It's such an extraordinary time to be alive that you just don't want to miss it. I mean, it's a really neat historical period.

Acting is always sort of the same - like you want to be - you know you're pretending and you want to make it as real as you can. That's the similarity. The mediums other than that are completely different. I mean you know with camera work you're doing really small detailed work and you know if you do anything too big you've sort of failed. And with stage, especially with the play I'm doing right now, I'm doing a farce, and it's so over the top that you can't actually be too big. So it's just completely different.