I knew it!

A geisha in Vietnam? Y.T.’s grandpa, who was there for a while, told her that the Nipponese took over Vietnam during the war and treated it with the cruelty that was their trademark before we nuked them and they discovered that they were pacifists.

Snow Crash, chapter 29 - Neal Stephenson

And the best story ever ends....

“Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light,      

And precipices show untrodden green;

There is a budding morrow in midnight;      

There is triple sight in blindness keen …

The Rise of Endymion, chapter 33 - Dan Simmons

Be god fearing

“Well, there you have it,” the man with the glass eye says. Y.T. is supposed to be on her way to a Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates franchise. If she screws up this delivery, that means she’s double-crossing God, who may or may not exist, and in any case who is capable of forgiveness. The Mafia definitely exists and hews to a higher standard of obedience

Snow Crash, chapter 23 - Neal Stephenson

The path

“I think he’s fought to stay alive this long to finish those Cantos,” I say softly. “Now he never will.” Father Duré sighs. “No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing.”

The Rise of Endymion, chapter 33 - Dan Simmons

Men and women

"It’s my late grandmother, may God have mercy on her soul,” she said, watching him look at the painting. “My role model.”

 “Why? Was she a programmer?” She just looked at him over the rotating pencil like, how slow can a mammal be and still have respiratory functions?

Snow Crash, chapter 7 - Neal Stephenson

Once in a lifetime

I had seen all too well through the eyes of too many others that Raul Endymion was a likable enough fellow, trustworthy, awkwardly valiant on occasion, but not known for his insight or intelligence. But I was smart enough and insightful enough—at least into my own soul—to know for certain that this one love had been enough for my lifetime, and while I grew to realize—as the days and weeks and then, almost certainly, months passed in my death cell with no arrival of death—that if I somehow miraculously returned to the universe of the living I would seek out joy and laughter and friendship again, but not a pale shadow of the love I had felt. Not children. No

The rise of Endymion, chapter 32 - Dan Simmons

Damned bosses

When Hiro learned how to do this, way back fifteen years ago, a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself. Now, that’s no longer possible. Software comes out of factories, and hackers are, to a greater or lesser extent, assembly-line workers. Worse yet, they may become managers who never get to write any code themselves

Snow Crash, chapter 6 - Neal Stephenson

The last request for my life ...

I often saw myself as a minor character in my own tale, a not-too-intelligent follower, usually reacting rather than leading, often failing to ask questions when he should or accepting answers all too inadequate. But I also saw the lumbering Raul Endymion of the tale as a man discovering love with a person he had waited for all of his life, and in that sense his willingness to follow without question was often balanced by his willingness to give his life in an instant for his dear friend.

The Rise of Endymion, chapter 32 - Dan Simmons

Science serving mankind

So now he has this other job. No brightness or creativity involved—but no cooperation either. Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has been working this job for six months, a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards, and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes. 

Oh, they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners, red-faced and sweaty with their own lies, stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress, standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink, I swear, can’t you guys tell time? 

Didn’t happen anymore. Pizza delivery is a major industry. A managed industry. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. Came in its doors unable to write an English sentence, from Abkhazia, Rwanda, Guanajuato, South Jersey, and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand.

Snow Crash, chapter 1 - Neal Stephenson

Life goes on

The Hyperion pilgrims: Colonel Kassad; the Hegemony Consul, Sol—Rachel’s father; Brawne Lamia—Aenea’s mother; the Templar Het Masteen; Martin Silenus; Father Hoyt—the current Pope; all at a loss to explain events at the time. For me as a child, just old words from a myth. Verses about strangers. How they must have thought their efforts and adventures over, only to have to pick up their burdens again. How often, I realized now as an adult in my standard thirties, how often that is the case in all of our lives

The Rise of Endymion, chapter 30 - Dan Simmons

Amen

Over the last few weeks, some newsgroups have been full of tales of war and battle fleets, of billions dying in the clash of species. To all such - and those living more peaceably around them -  we say: Look out on the universe. It does not case, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

A Fire Upen the Deep, chapter 35 - Vernol Vinge