Neal Quotes

The West-march of the Walmart Held all the food in the world, Bottled beer by the boatload, Frost-kept food, milk and meat. Setting up for a siege behind barricades The Norsemen fetched food, collected clothing, Turkish trousers with flies in the front Kept closed with clever contraptions, Tiny ~ Neal Stephenson

Spoken like a true Nipponese," Enoch says bitterly. "You never change." "Please make me understand what you are saying." "What of the man who cannot get out of bed and work, because he has no legs? What of the widow who has no husband to work, no children to support her? What of children who cannot improve their minds because they lack books and schoolhouses?" "You can shower gold on them," Goto Dengo says. "Soon enough, it will all be gone." "Yes. But some of it will be gone into books and bandages. ~ Neal Stephenson

But when you walk through yonder gate," Churchill said, pointing toward the Middle Tower at the end of the causeway, which was visible only as a crenellated cutout in the orange sky, "you'll find yourself in a London you no longer know. The changes wrought by the Fire were nothing. In that London, loyalty and allegiance are subtle and fluxional. 'Tis a chessboard with not only black and white pieces, but others as well, in diverse shades. You're a Bishop, and I'm a Knight, I can tell that much by our shapes, and the changes we have wrought on the board; but by fire-light 'Tis difficult to make out your true shade. ~ Neal Stephenson

If you die while you aren't really living, exactly when did death occur? ~ Buffi Neal

I remember being unusually pensive that May evening, perhaps it was the heat of Spring's first warm day which, encountering my thick winter blood, forced a dilution upward into a brain weary of straining the last six months to overcome freezing and the long absent thinning of blood stirred a weakening desire for the softer things, a nostalgia, yet a death, a precognition, if you will... ~ Neal Cassady

In the economy of Heaven, God does not send thunder if a still, small voice is enough, or a prophet if a priest can do the job. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

If there are older black people in the audience that I can see I will not say the n-word. I know they grew up with a different meaning. ~ Neal Brennan

This is the true meaning of alone; Levi Jedediah Calder suddenly realizing he no longer exists. ~ Neal Shusterman

Lev looks at Risa, almost afraid to ask the obvious question. Finally he says, 'Uh ... why do we have a baby?'
'Ask him,' says Risa.
Stone-faced, Conner looks out of the window. 'They're looking for two boys and a girl. Having a baby will throw them off.'
'Great,' snaps Risa. 'Maybe we should all pick up a baby along the way. ~ Neal Shusterman

Mortals fantasied that love was eternal and its loss unimaginable. Now we know neither is true. Love remained mortal, while we became eternal. ~ Neal Shusterman

History - the product, not the raw material - is a bottle with a label. For many years now, the emphasis of historical discussion has been laid upon the label (its iconography, its target-group of customers) and upon the interesting problems of manufacturing bottle-glass. The contents, on the other hand, are tasted in a knowing, perfunctory way and then spat out again. Only amateurs swallow them. ~ Neal Ascherson

God, as a loving Father, will stretch our souls at times. The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched ... God will tutor us by trying us because He loves us, not because of indifference! ~ Neal A. Maxwell

What if the places you went and the things you encountered in your work were more interesting than what was available in the physical world around you? ~ Neal Stephenson

Y.T. is maxing at a Mom's Truck Stop on 405, waiting for her ride. Not that she would ever be caught dead at a Mom's Truck Stop. If, like, a semi ran her over with all eighteen of its wheels in front of a Mom's Truck Stop, she would drag herself down the shoulder of the highway using her eyelid muscles until she reached a Snooze 'n' Cruise full of horny derelicts rather than go into a Mom's Truck Stop. ~ Neal Stephenson

Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles; Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bungee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. ~ Neal Stephenson

No love is ever wasted. Its worth does not lie in reciprocity. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

The hour of noon has passed,' said Judge Fang. 'Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken. ~ Neal Stephenson

full of mercy toward everyone who calls out to you. Psalm 86:5 ~ Dianne Neal Matthews

Neal didn't like to be asked things. It made his jaw tense. He'd give you a flippant answer. Like, whatever you were asking, it wasn't any of your business.
Like nothing was anyone's business.
Like nobody should ask questions that didn't absolutely need to be answered. ~ Rainbow Rowell

We could not learn love in the abstract any more than we could learn patience and the other cardinal virtues. Just as we cannot know the "fellowship of his sufferings" without suffering, we also come to know real fellowship with our fellowmen only by serving them. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Sometimes you have to be the monster to survive ~ Neal Shusterman

Even the good can become careless without the Lord's being there to chasten. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Are you going to tell me who she is?" she asked.
"A psychiatrist," Nick shot back.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it's about time," his mother replied. ~ Neal Baer

They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles; Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bungee jumping. ~ Neal Stephenson

if one is found just start the rest and u might understand what comes next ~ Neal Shusterman

Ironically, as some people become harder, they use softer words to describe dark deeds. This, too, is part of being sedated by secularism. Needless abortion, for instance, is a "reproductive health procedure, ... " "Illegitimacy" gives way to the wholly sanitized words "non-marital birth" or "alternative parenting." ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Whether you're talking about the Egyptian pharaohs or Hollywood movie stars it all ends the same way. DEATH ~ Neal A. Yeager

It was easier to deal with Tennyson when he was fighting me; but having him on my side was frightening, because now I didn't know who the enemy was. ~ Neal Shusterman

I think I want you," he said.
Georgie squeezed the hand he was holding to his chest, and used it as an anchor to pull herself closer. "You think..."
Neal licked his bottom lip and nodded. "I think..." The closer she was, the more he looked away. "I think I just want you," he said.
"Okay," Georgie agreed.
Neal looked surprised – he almost laughed. "Okay?"
She nodded, close enough to bump her nose up against his. "Okay. You can have me."
He pushed his forehead into hers, pulling his chin and mouth back. "Just like that."
"Yeah."
"Really," he said.
"Really," she promised. ~ Rainbow Rowell

We're not broken up."
"I know, but we're still broken. ~ Rainbow Rowell

I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there."
There might as well be, "Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators. ~ Neal Stephenson

You're not eating, Cam," Roberta says as she comes out to join him across the table. Roberta - his creator, or builder - whatever term one gives to the individual who conceived of you. Perhaps, then, it should be "mother," though he's loath to use the word. ~ Neal Shusterman

WE do try to eat," Raoul called back to her [Kel]. I go all faint if I don't get fed regularly. Only think of the disgrace to the King's Own if I fell from the saddle."
"But there was that time in Fanwood," a voice behind them said.
"That wedding in Tameran," added the blonde Sergeant Osbern, riding a horse-length behind Kel.
"Don't forget when what's-his-name, with the army, retired," yelled a third.
"Silence, insubordinate curs!" cried Raoul. "Do not sully my new squire's ears with your profane tales!"
"Even if they're TRUE?" That was Dom. It seemed Neal wasn't the only family member versed in irony. ~ Tamora Pierce

Beautiful is dangerous. ~ Neal Shusterman

The dues of discipleship are high indeed, and how much we can take so often determines how much we can then give. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

The two of them against each other. The two of them against the world. Everything in their lives was now defined by that binary. If they had to die today in order to live, it would somehow be wrong if they didn't do it together. ~ Neal Shusterman

Clearly, when we baptize, our eyes should gaze beyond the baptismal font to the holy temple. The great garner into which the sheaves should be gathered is the holy temple. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell. ~ Neal Shusterman

Men's and nations' finest hour consist of those moments when extraordinary challenge is met by extraordinary response. Hence in those darkest hours, we must light our individual candles rather than vying with others to call attention to the enveloping darkness. Our indignation about injustice should lead to illumination, for if it does not, we are only adding to the despair-and the moment of gravest danger is when there is so little light that darkness seems normal! ~ Neal A. Maxwell

We try to entertain first, advertise second. When you find out that it's sponsored, we've already won you over. We try to make it obvious that the brand has made it better. ~ Charles Lincoln Neal

No," says Ariana. "It was a dream. Reality got in the way, that's all. ~ Neal Shusterman

True discipleship is for volunteers only. Only volunteers will trust the Guide sufficiently to follow Him in the dangerous ascent which only He can lead. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

The joint committee invited economists of many economic stripes to model what would happen if America switched from the current code to a unified income tax or a consumption tax. Every economist who modeled reported that the consumption tax would increase long-term economic growth. ~ Neal Boortz

On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents' eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out. ~ Neal Shusterman

When at length we tire of putting people down, this self-inflicted fatigue can give way to the invigorating calisthenics of lifting people up. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

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

So she spends until about eleven A.M. reading, re-reading, and understanding the new changes in the Project. There are many of these, because this is a Monday morning and Marietta and her higher-ups spent the whole weekend closeted on the top floor, having a ~ Neal Stephenson

Perhaps I shouldn't like it so much, but I've always been one for finding beauty in the ugliest stories. ~ LeAnn Neal Reilly

You can whisper, and people will still hear thunder. ~ Neal Shusterman

In the timeless and universal manner of authors conversing in public places, he did not fail to mention its title, Volume III of Principia Mathematica entitled, The System of the World, available shortly, where books are sold. ~ Neal Stephenson

People have both good and bad in them; you can choose to see either. ~ Buffi Neal

Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor. ~ Neal Stephenson

I try to find a style that matches the book. In the Baroque Cycle, I got infected with the prose style of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, which is my favorite era. It's recent enough that it is easy to read - easier than Elizabethan English - but it's pre-Victorian and so doesn't have the pomposity that is often a problem with 19th-century English prose. It is earthy and direct and frequently hilarious. ~ Neal Stephenson

I marveled that people could live so close - that you could literally be surrounded by thousands who were only inches away - and yet be completely isolated. I found it hard to imagine. It's not so hard for me to imagine anymore. ~ Neal Shusterman

Billboards, billboards, drink this, eat that, use all manner of things, everyone, the best, the cheapest, the purest and most satisfying of all their available counterparts. Red lights flicker on every horizon, airplanes beware; cars flash by, more lights. Workers repair the gas main. Signs, signs, lights, lights, streets, streets. ~ Neal Cassady

Just what do we tax under our current system? Work, that's what. Hard work and productivity. The harder you work, the more you achieve. The more you achieve, the more you're taxed. To make matters worse, under our "progressive" income tax system, the harder you work, the more severe the punishment actually is! ~ Neal Boortz

Dogs have a sense of smell much greater than ours and they're much faster than we are. We have fairly dull senses, fairly slow locomotion. In our Olympic trials, we celebrate speeds that would be an embarrassment to a bird or a dog or another animal. ~ Neal Barnard

The meeting would later be known as the Council of the Seven Eves. ~ Neal Stephenson

But for the moment it was just a pattern of sensory impressions painted on the screen of her memory, not soaked in yet, not understood, not even granted the dignity of having really happened. ~ Neal Stephenson

Are you a dim bulb or high-wattage? ~ Neal Shusterman

It's daytime. A wall of billowing orange flame grows up silently from the tank farm a mile away, like a time-lapse chrysanthemum. It is so vast and complicated in its blooming, uncontrolled growth that Rife stops halfway up the stairs to watch. ~ Neal Stephenson

Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don't see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark. ~ Neal Boortz

So which theory did Lagos believe in? The
relativist or the universalist?"
"He did not seem to think there was much of a difference. In the end, they are
both somewhat mystical. Lagos believed that both schools of thought had
essentially arrived at the same place by different lines of reasoning."
"But it seems to me there is a key difference," Hiro says. "The universalists
think that we are determined by the prepatterned structure of our brains -- the
pathways in the cortex. The relativists don't believe that we have any limits."
"Lagos modified the strict Chomskyan theory by supposing that learning a
language is like blowing code into PROMs -- an analogy that I cannot interpret."
"The analogy is clear. PROMs are Programmable Read-Only Memory chips," Hiro
says. "When they come from the factory, they have no content. Once and only
once, you can place information into those chips and then freeze it -- the
information, the software, becomes frozen into the chip -- it transmutes into
hardware. After you have blown the code into the PROMs, you can read it out,
but you can't write to them anymore. So Lagos was trying to say that the
newborn human brain has no structure -- as the relativists would have it -- and
that as the child learns a language, the developing brain structures itself
accordingly, the language gets 'blown into the hardware and becomes a permanent
part of the brain's deep ~ Neal Stephenson

Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code. ~ Neal Stephenson

The submissive will make it through to that final scene, for the word of God will lead the man and woman of Christ "in a straight and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery ... and land their souls ... at the right hand of God in the kingdom, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers" (Helaman 3:30) "who have been ever since the world began ... to go no more out." ~ Neal A. Maxwell

If the kingdom of God is not first, it doesn't matter what's second. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Ammonia worked better, but it was dangerous, and you couldn't easily get more of it in space. If the Cloud Ark survived, it would survive on a water-based economy. A hundred years from now everything in space would be cooled by circulating water systems. But for now they had to keep the ammonia-based equipment running as well. Further ~ Neal Stephenson

I will always be there on the horizon,' I tell her.
And with infinite sorrow, she says, 'I believe that. But sadly I am no longer looking out of that window. ~ Neal Shusterman

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

A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

You mentioned ... one of the two great labyrinths into which the mind is drawn. What ... is the other?"
"The other is the composition of the continuum, or: what is space? ~ Neal Stephenson

Unix is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic: a living body of narrative that many people know by heart, and tell over and over again - making their own personal embellishments whenever it strikes their fancy. The bad embellishments are shouted down, the good ones picked up by others, polished, improved, and, over time, incorporated into the story. [ ... ] Thus Unix has slowly accreted around a simple kernel and acquired a kind of complexity and asymmetry about it that is organic, like the roots of a tree, or the branchings of a coronary artery. Understanding it is more like anatomy than physics. ~ Neal Stephenson

The Bill of Life was signed, the Unwind Accord went into effect, and the war was over. Everyone was so happy to end the war, no one cared about the consequences ~ Neal Shusterman

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other. ~ Neal Cassady

I think 3D is a great innovation for the film business. But I hope it's not the thing that kills the golden egg because what's happening now is every movie there's pressure from the studio to turn it into a 3D movie. ~ Neal H. Moritz

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

they have commandos and astronauts who know this kind of thing cold." "But Raz, you are educable, you can learn 'this kind of thing,' if by that you mean how to maneuver an S2-35B and how to assemble a Cold Black Mirror. You've spent your whole life, ever since you were Collected, becoming educable. ~ Neal Stephenson

Our cultures used to be almost hereditary, but now we choose them from a menu as various as the food court of a suburban shopping mall. Ambition, curiosity, talent, sexuality or religion can draw us to new cities and cultures, where we become foreigners to our parents. Synthetic cultures are nimbler than old ones, often imprudently so. They have scattered so widely that they can no longer hear each other and now some have gone so far afield that they have passed through the apocalypse while the rest of us are watching it on TV. ~ Neal Stephenson

Our journey is demanding enough that the need for reassurance as well as reminders is constant. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

The internal, and eternal, struggle, between our base impulses and the rigorous demands of our own moral system is quintessentially human. It is how we conduct ourselves in that struggle that determines how we may in time be judged by a higher power. ~ Neal Stephenson

She slammed the book closed, ran to her bed, gathered her stuffed animals up in her arms, started chewing on her blanket, and cried for a while, considering the question of trolls. ~ Neal Stephenson

We can be walking witnesses and standing sermons to which objective onlookers can say a quiet amen. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Look behind you now.
Do you feel in your heart a slight hastening of its beat, and a powerful sense that something momentous is about to happen?
... Perhaps, then, this is the hour that Mary Hightower takes to the sky with thousands Afterlights heading toward Memphis.
... Perhaps this is the moment that Nick, the Chocolate Ogre, arrives in the same city in search for Allie, only to find that he has no idea where to look.
... Perhaps this is the very instant that a monster called the McGill arrives there as well, aching to ease his pain by sharing his misery - not only with his new minions, but with anyone he can.
... And perhaps you can sense, in some small twisting loop of your gut, the covergence of the wrong, of the right, and the woefully misguided. If you do, then pay sharp attention to the moment you wake, and the moment you fall asleep ... For maybe then you will know, without a shadow of doubt, which is which. ~ Neal Shusterman

Georgie hadn't known back then how much she was going to come to need Neal, how he was going to become like air to her.
Was that codependence? Or was it just marriage? ~ Rainbow Rowell

The curt maneuver forced hearty laughter from all of the fathers in the ballroom, who were delighted by the illusion of danger and the impotence of Nature. ~ Neal Stephenson

L1, by process of elimination," Luisa said drily, and laughed. "You space people love to count down, I know your ways." "It's ~ Neal Stephenson

THE PREMISE OF THIS BOOK CAME TO ME CIRCA 2006, ~ Neal Stephenson

Most people have two emergency modes. Fight and Flight. But Conner always knew he had three. Fight, Flight, and Screw Up Royally. ~ Neal Shusterman

Any weed dumb enough to grow tall ain't got no chance. It gets decapitated by the next train that comes through. ~ Neal Shusterman

When it came to my research, I never took any shortcuts. Over the past five years, I'd worked my way down the entire recommended gunter reading list. Douglas Adams. Kurt Vonnegut. Neal Stephenson. Richard K. Morgan. Stephen King. Orson Scott Card. Terry Pratchett. Terry Brooks. Bester, Bradbury, Haldeman, Heinlein, Tolkien, Vance, Gibson, Gaiman, Sterling, Moorcock, Scalzi, Zelazny. ~ Ernest Cline

Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

This bridge is where I had my first kiss and... I'm pretty sure it's where I had my last."-Cassidy Haines ~ Bethany Neal

Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down. ~ Neal Shusterman

There's no way to get from the point in Hemn space where we are now, to one that includes pink nerve-gas-farting dragons, following any plausible action principle. Which is really just a technical term for there being a coherent story joining one moment to the next. If you simply throw action principles out the window, you're granting the world the freedom to wander anywhere in Hemn space, to any outcome, without constraint. It becomes pretty meaningless. The mind - even the sline mind - knows that there is an action principle that governs how the world evolves from one moment to the next - that restricts our world's path to points that tell an internally consistent story. So it focuses its worrying on outcomes that are more plausible, such as you leaving. ~ Neal Stephenson

Chain of command knows no age restrictions," he once told Connor. "You could be six, but if you were my superior, I'd still do as I was told. ~ Neal Shusterman

Keep me warm. I have no warmth of my own- only what the sun brings me, and the sun is halfway around the world. Keep me warm. ~ Neal Shusterman

I've got the recording process down, and I can knock it out very quickly. ~ Neal Schon

Good thing about bad rubbish is you can make the stench go away just by covering it up. It never comes back as long as you keep a tight lid on it. ~ Neal Shusterman

Rife's key realization was that there's no difference between modern culture and Sumerian. We have a huge workforce that is illiterate or alliterate and relies on TV-which is sort of an oral tradition. And we have a small, extremely literate power elite-the people who go into the Meatverse, basically-who understand that information is power, and who control society because they have this semimystical ability to speak magic computer languages. ~ Neal Stephenson

Wars have a way reinventing people. And making too many things disappear.
-Sonia ~ Neal Shusterman