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Book: Snow Crash
Quotes of Book: Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
The businessman turns out to have a lot of zanshin. Translating this concept into English is like translating "fuckface" into Nipponese, but it might translate into "emotional intensity" in football lingo."
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
No point in describing the office. No point in even allowing the office to evenregister on her eyeballs and take up valuable memory space in her brain.Fluorescent lights and partitions with carpet glued to them. I prefer my carpeton the floor, thank you. A color scheme. Ergonomic shit. Chicks withlipstick. Xerox smell. Everything's pretty new, she figures.
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
one {everything looks the same in America, there are no transitions now}.
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
Is this part of your church thing?" he asks. Juanita has been using herexcess money to start her own branch of the Catholic church -- she considersherself a missionary to the intelligent atheists of the world."Don't be condescending," she says. "That's exactly the attitude I'm fighting.Religion is not for simpletons.""Sorry. This is unfair, you know -- you can read every expression on my face,and I'm looking at you through a fucking blizzard.""It's definitely related to religion," she says. "But this is so complex, andyour background in that area is so deficient, I don't know where to begin.""Hey, I went to church every week in high school. I sang in the choir.""I know. That's exactly the problem. Ninety-nine percent of everything thatgoes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actualreligion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they concludethat the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism isconnected with being intelligent in people's minds.""So none of that stuff I learned in church has anything to do with what you'retalking about?"Juanita thinks for a while, eyeing him. Then she pulls a hypercard out of herpocket. "Here. Take this.
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
She eyes him warily. Exactly the same way she did when he came into her officeyears ago.It comes into his mind to wonder why she is always so alert in his presence. Incollege, he used to think that she was afraid of his intellect, but he's knownfor years that this is the last of her worries. At Black Sun Systems, hefigured that it was just typical female guardedness -- Juanita was afraid he wastrying to get her into the sack. But this, too, is pretty much out of thequestion.At this late date in his romantic career, he is just canny enough to come upwith a new theory: She's being careful because she likes him. She likes him inspite of herself. He is exactly the kind of tempting but utterly wrong romanticchoice that a smart girl like Juanita must learn to avoid.That's definitely it. There's something to be said for getting older.
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
I didn't think you talked to people in the Metaverse.""I do if I want to get through to someone in a hurry," she says. "And I'llalways talk to you.""Why me?""You know. Because of us. Remember? Because of our relationship -- when I waswriting this thing -- you and I are the only two people who can ever have anhonest conversation in the Metaverse.""You're just the same mystical crank you always were," he says, smiling so as tomake this a charming statement."You can't imagine how mystical and cranky l am now, Hiro.""How mystical and cranky are you?
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
scattering of schizophrenic first worlders who have long ago burned their brains to ash in the radiant heat of their own imaginings.
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him, and confused by the fact that he cared so deeply about her opinion. And she, maybe, was beginning to think that if Hiro was so convinced in his own mind that he was unworthy of her, maybe he knew something she didn't. Hiro
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
Now the roads just feed into a parkingsystem -- not a lot, not a ramp, but a system -- and lose their identity.Getting through the intersection involves tracing paths through the parkingsystem, many braided filaments of direction like the Ho Chi Minh trail. CSV-5has better throughput, but Cal.12 has better pavement. That is typical --Fairlanes roads emphasize getting you there, for Type A drivers, and Cruisewaysemphasize the enjoyment of the ride, for Type B drivers.
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
SouthernCalifornia doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.Not enough roads for the number of people. Fairlanes, Inc. is laying new onesall the time. Have to bulldoze lots of neighborhoods to do it, but thoseseventies and eighties developments exist to be bulldozed, right?
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases,but he has heard some rumors. Most pizza deliveries happen in the eveninghours, which Uncle Enzo considers to be his private time. And how would youfeel if you bad to interrupt dinner with your family in order to call someobstreperous dork in a Burbclave and grovel for a late fucking pizza? UncleEnzo has not put in fifty years serving his family and his country so that, atthe age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters, he can getout of the bathtub dripping wet and lie down and kiss the feet of some sixteenyear-old skate punk whose pepperoni was thirty-one minutes in coming. Oh, God.It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea.But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way.You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line.It's like being a kamikaze pilot. Your mind is clear. Other people -- storeclerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaninglessjobs that make up Life in America -- other people just rely on plain oldcompetition.Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster and better than yourhigh school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging,because we're in competition with those guys, and people notice these things.What a fucking rat race that is. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition.Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you'recompeting against some identical operation down the street. You work harderbecause everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, yourlife. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but whatkind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, noteven the Nipponese, can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator isproud to wear the uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the frontwalks of innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza onhis shoulder, red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or15:15 or the occasional 20:43.
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Neal Stephenson _ Snow Crash
You're a hacker. That means you have deep structures to worry about, too.""Deep structures?""Neurolinguistic pathways in your brain. Remember the first time you learnedbinary code?""Sure.""You were forming pathways in your brain. Deep structures. Your nerves grownew connections as you use them -- the axons split and push their way betweenthe dividing glial cells -- your bioware selfmodifies -- the software becomespart of the hardware. So now you're vulnerable -- all hackers are vulnerable --to a nam-shub. We have to look out for each other.""What's a nam-shub? Why am I vulnerable to it?""Just don't stare into any bitmaps. Anyone try to show you a raw bitmap lately?Like, in the Metaverse?"Interesting. "Not to me personally, but now that you mention it, this Brandycame up to my friend --""A cult prostitute of Asherah. Trying to spread the disease. Which issynonymous with evil. Sound melodramatic? Not really. You know, to theMesopotamians, there was no independent concept of evil. Just disease and illhealth. Evil was a synonym for disease. So what does that tell you?
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