Neal Stephenson Quotes

I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.

I'm not defining Christians as Jews or Jews as Christians or zebras as elephants.

We understand what the difference is between what we understand and what the community understands about what we're doing because they have supported us long enough for me to stay out here, while other people who are doing other things have not. A lot of people have trouble pinning down what it is we do and how. But we don't have any trouble with that. As long as that's their problem, it's their problem.

Would it upset men if they found out we weren't different? Are we? Aren't we? Damned if I know.

I never met a girl I didn't meet

Wait, I got it. We, uh, won the battle and lost the war, or was it the other way around? 'Cause around here, it's hard to tell sometimes.

Well I'm not dumb, but I can't understand why she walked like a woman, but talked like a man.

How long have you been a Wiccan?' 'A what?' 'A pagan. A witch.' 'I'm not a witch,' I said, glancing out the door. 'I'm a wizard.' Sanya frowned. 'What is the difference?' 'Wizard has a Z' He looked at me blankly. 'No one appreciates me.' I muttered.

We are, none of us, 'either' mothers or daughters; to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both.

I'm not sure I know what "normal" is.

Well, I've been waiting, I was sure we'd meet between the trains we're waiting for I think it's time to board another Please understand, I never had a secret chart to get me to the heart of this or any other matter

I hear so many things about who I am supposed to be I hardly know what to believe. I am willing to tell all, but what Is it? Doubtless all these myths and legends will be straightened out eventually, but It may take years.

Artemis Fowl will never be secondary." "I thought you were Artemis Fowl the Second?" said Holly.

Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing.

To me Donnie Darko was about adolescence. And about how, as soon as you start to grow up and you sort of move out into the world, you realize everything is so trippy. That anything can be anything.

I'm eighteen, and I don't know what I want.

who is the love of my life? Maybe I don't have one. Maybe it's not love at all. But if it's not love, then what is it? I wish I knew.

And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.

How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another.

I hate not knowing what to believe anymore. I hate not knowing what's real.

What is your name?" asked Lear. Caius," said Kent. And whence do you hail?" From Bonking, sire." Well, yes, lad, as do we all," said Lear, "but from what town?

Oft from new truths, and new phrase, new doubts grow, As strange attire aliens the men we know.

He didn't know what he wanted. He only knew what he didn't want.

I have no idea where I'm going but here's the real question: What am I doing here in the first place?

And this was the main precondition, that anything might be something else. Once I'd accepted that, it followed that I might be mad, or that someone might think me mad. How could I say for certain that I wasn't, if I couldn't say for certain that a curtain wasn't a mountain range?