# Quote — Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

> He hadn't really known what to expect of America. But people here seem to do things—hangings included—with a blunt, blank efficiency that's admirable and disappointing at the same time. Like jumping fish, they go about difficult matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other people must absorb, along with faery-tales and superstitions, from their families and villages. Maybe it is because most of them came over on ships.

- 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/he-hadnt-really

## 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)