Neal Stephenson

As far as the laws of probability, my lady, these cannot be broken, any more than any other mathematical principle. But laws of physics and mathematics are like a coordinate system that runs in only one dimension. Perhaps there is another dimension perpendicular to it, invisible to those laws of physics, describing the same things with different rules, and those rules are written in our hearts, in a deep place where we cannot go and read them except in our dreams.

"In an era when everything can be surveiled, all we have left is politeness."

“The Indians of the American Southwest called him Coyote, those of the Pacific Coast called him Raven. Europeans called him Reynard the Fox. African-Americans called him Br'er Rabbit. In twentieth-century literature he appears first as Bugs Bunny and then as the Hacker."

"When I was a lad, that word had a double meaning. It could mean a trickster who broke into things—but it could also mean an especially skilled coder."

"The ambiguity is common in post-Neolithic cultures," Hackworth said. "As technology became more important, the Trickster underwent a shift in character and became the god of crafts — of technology, if you will — while retaining the underlying roguish qualities. So we have the Sumerian Enki, the Greek Prometheus and Hermes, Norse Loki, and so on.”

If the item of stolen property had been anything other than a book, it would have been confiscated. But a book is different—it is not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and thence to a well-ordered society, as the Master stated many times.

“It’s the only punishment that seems to sink in—we employ it with some frequency.”

“Then perhaps it is not sinking in as well as you suppose,” Lord Finkle-McGraw said, looking sad and sounding bemused.

“Yet how am I to cultivate the persons of the barbarians for whom I have perversely been given responsibility?"

… "The Master stated in his Great Learning that the extension of knowledge was the root of all other virtues."

"I cannot send the boy to school, Chang."

"Think instead of the girl," Chang said, "the girl and her book."

"Sorry," she said, "I got out as fast as I could, but I had to stay and socialize. Protocol, you know."

"Explain protocol," Nell said. This was how she always talked to the Primer.

"At the place we're going, you need to watch your manners. Don't say 'explain this' or 'explain that.'"

"Would it impose on your time unduly to provide me with a concise explanation of the term protocol?" Nell said.

Again Rita made that nervous laugh and looked at Nell with an expression that looked like poorly concealed alarm.

The seed of this idea had been germinating in Hackworth's mind for some months now but had not bloomed, for the same reason that none of his ideas had ever developed into companies. He lacked an ingredient somewhere, and as he now realized, that ingredient was subversiveness. Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, the embodiment of the Victorian establishment, was a subversive…now he was trying to subvert his own granddaughter.

”So, if the Shanghainese gentleman were to request that our engineer partake in activities that we would normally consider unethical or even treasonous, we might take an uncharacteristically forgiving stance. Providing, that is, that the engineer kept us well-informed.”

”Would that be something like being a double agent, then?” Hackworth said.

Napier winced, as if he were being caned himself. ”It is a crashingly unsubtle phrase. But I can forgive your using it in this context.”

”Would John Zaibatsu then make some kind of formal commitment to this arrangement?”

”It is not done that way,” Major Napier said.

”I was afraid of that,"”Hackworth said.

”Typically such commitments are superfluous, as in most cases the party has very little choice in the matter.”

”Yes,” Hackworth said, ”I see what you mean.”

"What's a matter compiler?"

"We call it the M.C. for short."

"Why?"

"Because M.C. stands for matter compiler, or so they say."

"Why?"

"It just does. In letters, I guess."

"What are letters?"

"Kinda like mediaglyphics except they're all black, and they're tiny, they don't move, they're old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use 'em to make short words for long words."

The difference between stupid and intelligent people — and this is true whether or not they are well-educated — is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations — in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.

Apthorp was not a formal organization that could be looked up in a phone book; in financial cant, it referred to a strategic alliance of several immense companies, including Machine-Phase Systems Limited and Imperial Tectonics Limited. ... MPS made consumer goods and ITL made real estate, which was, as ever, where the real money was. Counted by the hectare, it didn't amount to much...but it was the most expensive real estate in the world outside of a few blessed places like Tokyo, San Francisco, and Manhattan. ...every new piece of land possessed the charms of Frisco, the strategic location of Manhattan, the feng-shui of Hong Kong, the dreary but obligatory Lebensraum of L.A. It was no longer necessary to send out dirty yokels in coonskin caps to chart the wilderness, kill the abos, and clear-cut the groves....