# Quote — Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

> Among fine stone sea-merchants' houses, there is a brick-red door with a bunch of grapes dangling above it. Enoch goes through that door and finds himself in a good tavern. Men with swords and expensive clothes turn round to look at him. Slavers, merchants of rum and molasses and tea and tobacco, and captains of the ships that carry those things. It could be any place in the world, for the same tavern is in London, Cadiz, Smyrna, and Manila, and the same men are in it. None of them cares, supposing they even knew, that witches are being hanged five minutes' walk away.

- Author: [Neal Stephenson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson.md)
- Book: [Quicksilver](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle#Book_One:_Quicksilver) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver/among-fine-stone

## More from this book

> "My father, Drake, educated me for one reason alone," Daniel finally says. "To assist him in his preparations for the Apocalypse. He reckoned it would occur in the year 1666—Number of the Beast and all that... When I came of age, I would be a man of the cloth, with the full university education, well versed in many dead classical languages, so that I could stand on the Cliffs of Dover and personally welcome Jesus Christ back to England in fluent Aramaic."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver/my-father-drake.md)

> "It is a symbol of Mercury--patron of commerce--who has been worshipped in this cellar--and in this city--for a thousand years, by Bishops as well as business-men. It is a cult that adapts itself to any religion, just as easily as quicksilver adapts itself to any container."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver/it-is-a-symbol.md)

> "I believe that binary arithemetickal engines will be of enormous significance"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver/i-believe-that.md)