All Quotes

"The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears — as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy."

"New York is the biggest mouth in the world. It appears to be prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban conspiracy to beguile man from his birthright (the good ground), to hang him by his eyebrows from skyhooks above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him."

"“The-Shadow-of-the-Wall–Primitive Instincts Still Alive”"

"To look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of a fibrous tumor."

"All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable."

"I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist's hand even were that magic hand in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion."

"The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope."

"Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles."

"There is nothing more uncommon than common sense."

"She was in a 'facility' which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright-pink and blue nestled in the hills-what artistry!"

"Among the great modern architects, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Louis Kahn were arguably deists. ... Wright's use of the word “nature” did not mean only what-we-find-outdoors. It was something deeper. Wright knew that when people speak of the “nature of things” they mean their very essence, the that-which-makes-them-what- they-are, which is always and only one step away from that-who-makes- them-what-they-are. ... Wright thought not that he was God but that he brought or allowed God into the world through what he did, creating and designing. ... Wright actually thought himself a prophet, which of course is a different to being God, or an angel. ... bringing God into the world in an act of something like mid-wifery from the womb of nature, is not at all Moses-like. It is not a bringing down of Law from on high after personal coaching from God, but a bringing forth of a God already there in potential. There is no presumption of having seen or met God of the Bible. One makes the God one believes in happen."

"He's the greatest architect of the nineteenth century."

"His place in history is secure. His continuing influence is assured. This country's architectural achievements would be unthinkable without him. He has been a teacher to us all."

"The social outcome of the arts and crafts movement was not commensurate with the needs of the new situation; as Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright pointed out in his memorable speech at Hull House in 1908, the machine itself was as much an instrument of art, in the hands of an artist, as were the simple tools and utensils."

"So long, Frank Lloyd Wright. I can't believe your song is gone so soon. I barely learned the tune"

"When it gets down to it—talking trade balances here—once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out ... once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity—y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery"

"This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them."

"HIRO PROTAGONIST Last of the freelance hackers Greatest sword fighter in the world Stringer, Central Intelligence Corporation Specializing in software-related intel (music, movies & microcode) On the back is gibberish explaining how he may be reached: a telephone number. A universal voice phone locator code. A P.O. box. His address on half a dozen electronic communications nets. And an address in the Metaverse."

"Hiro, who as of thirty seconds ago is no longer the Deliverator, gets out of the car and pulls his swords out of the trunk, straps them around his body, prepares for a breathtaking nighttime escape run…Above him, in the house that owns the pool, a light has come on, and children are looking down at him through their bedroom windows, all warm and fuzzy in their Li'l Crips and Ninja Raft Warrior pajamas, which can either be flameproof or noncarcinogenic but not both at the same time. Dad is emerging from the back door, pulling on a jacket. It is a nice family, a safe family in a house full of light, like the family he was a part of until thirty seconds ago."

"When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins."

"Y.T. has been privileged to watch many a young Clint plant his sweet face in an empty Burbclave pool during an unauthorized night run, but always on a skateboard, never ever in a car. The landscape of the suburban night has much weird beauty if you just look."

"CHISELED SPAM is what you will see in the mirror if you surf on a weak plank with dumb, fixed wheels and interface with a muffler, retread, snow turd, road-kill, driveshaft, railroad tie, or unconscious pedestrian… Buy a set of RadiKS Mark II Smartwheels - it's cheaper than a total face retread and a lot more fun. Smartwheels use sonar, laser rangefinding, and millimeter-wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris before you even get honed about them."

"The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it."

"He is not seeing real people, of course. This is all a part of the moving illustration drawn by his computer according to specifications coming down the fiber-optic cable. The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse."

"It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe they are too smart to be sexists."

"Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds."

"Ng Security Industries Semi-Autonomous Guard Unit #A-367 lives in a pleasant black-and-white Metaverse where porterhouse steaks grow on trees, dangling at head level from low branches, and blood-drenched Frisbees fly through the crisp, cool air for no reason at all, until you catch them. Out in the world beyond his yard, there are other yards with other doggies just like him. These aren't nasty dogs. They are all his friends."

"WELCOME! It is my pleasure to welcome all quality folks to visiting of Hong Kong. Whether seriously in business or on a fun-loving hijink, make yourself totally homely in this meager environment…We of Greater Hong Kong take many prides in our tiny nation's extravagant growth… The potentials of all ethnic races and anthropologies to merge under a banner of the Three Principles to follow: 1. Information, information, information! 2. Totally fair marketeering! 3. Strict ecology! have been peerless in the history of economic strife… Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong is a private, wholly extraterritorial, sovereign, quasi-national entity not recognized by any other nationalities and in no way affiliated with the former Crown Colony of Hong Kong… Join us instantly! Your enterprising partner, Mr. Lee"

"Only the Mafia drives cars like that…You see these Town Cars everywhere, but you never see them move…She's not even sure they have engines in them."

""Did you win your sword fight?" "Of course I won the fucking sword fight," Hiro says. "I'm the greatest sword fighter in the world." "And you wrote the software." "Yeah. That, too," Hiro says."

"There is something new: A globe about the size of a grapefruit, a perfectly detailed rendition of Planet Earth, hanging in space at arm's length in front of his eyes. Hiro has heard about this but never seen it. It is a piece of CIC software called, simply, Earth. It is the user interface that CIC uses to keep track of every bit of spatial information that it owns — all the maps, weather data, architectural plans, and satellite surveillance stuff."

"The librarian daemon looks like a pleasant, fiftyish, silver-haired, bearded man with bright blue eyes, wearing a V-neck sweater over a work shirt, with a coarsely woven, tweedy-looking wool tie. The tie is loosened, the sleeves pushed up. Even though he's just a piece of software, he has reason to be cheerful; he can move through the nearly infinite stacks of information in the Library with the agility of a spider dancing across a vast web of cross-references. The Librarian is the only piece of CIC software that costs even more than Earth; the only thing he can't do is think."

"Watching government regulators trying to keep up with the world is my favorite sport."

"A monopolist's work is never done. No such thing as a perfect monopoly. Seems like you can never get that last one-tenth of one percent."

"The function of the Raft is to bring more biomass. To renew America. Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight…Nobody really gets eaten. It's just a figure of speech. They come here, they get decent jobs, find Christ, buy a Weber grill, and live happily ever after. What's wrong with that?"

"Jason Breckinridge," the man says. "The Iron Pumper," Jason reminds him. "Shut up. For the rest of this conversation, you don't say anything. When I tell you what you did wrong, you don't say you're sorry, because I already know you're sorry. And when you drive outta here alive, you don't thank me for being alive. And you don't even say goodbye to me." Jason nods. "I don't even want you to nod, that's how much you annoy me. Just freeze and shut up."

"Mental note: Whether or not Raven intended to take on a bunch of Crips and Enforcers single-handedly tonight, he didn't even bother to pack a gun."

"Hiro watches the large, radioactive, spear-throwing killer drug-lord ride his motorcycle into Chinatown. Which is the same as riding it into China, as far as chasing him down is concerned."

"Raven's packing a torpedo warhead that he boosted from an old Soviet nuke sub," Squeaky says. "It was a torpedo that was designed to take out a carrier battle group with one shot. A nuclear torpedo. You know that funny-looking sidecar that Raven has on his Harley? Well, it's a hydrogen bomb…hooked up to EEG trodes embedded in his skull."

"You don't respect those people very much, Y.T., because you're young and arrogant. But I don't respect them much either, because I am old and wise."

"Y.T. stops walking, turns, finally looks at the guy. He's tall, lean. Black suit, black hair. And he's got a gnarly-looking glass eye. "What happened to your eye?" she says. "Ice pick, Bayonne, 1985," he says. "Any other questions?""

"You want me to steal something," Y.T. says. The man with the glass eye is pained, wounded. "No, no, no. Kid, listen. We're the fucking Mafia. We want to steal something, we already know how to do that, okay?"

"Juanita's going to hire him, right? — he slams the button for LAVATORY GRANDE ROYALE. Never been here before. It's like something on the top floor of a luxury high-rise casino in Atlantic City, where they put semi-retarded adults from South Philly after they've blundered into the mega-jackpot. It's got everything that a dimwitted pathological gambler would identify with luxury: gold-plated fixtures, lots of injection-molded pseudomarble, velvet drapes, and a butler."

"The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder — its DNA — xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane…."

""No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto…. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees…. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks …. The only ones left in the city are street people…immigrants…young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood…. Young, smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it."

"But there have been several efforts to deliver us from the hands of primitive, irrational religion. The first was made by someone named Enki about four thousand years ago. The second was made by Hebrew scholars in the eighth century B.C. ... but eventually it just devolved into empty legalism. Another attempt was made by Jesus — that one was hijacked by viral influences within fifty days of his death. The virus was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but we're in the middle of a big epidemic that started in Kansas in 1900 and has been gathering momentum ever since."

"Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing — is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?"

"Do you believe in Jesus?" Hiro says. "Yes. But not in the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus." "How can you be a Christian without believing in that?" "I would say," Juanita says, "how can you be a Christian with it? Anyone who takes the trouble to study the gospels can see that the bodily resurrection is a myth that was tacked onto the real story several years after the real histories were written. It's so National Enquirer-esque, don't you think?"

""Would Sumerian sound anything like glossolalia?" "Judgment call. Ask someone real," the Librarian says."

""There is no provable genetic relationship between Sumerian and any tongue that came afterward," the Librarian says… "Okay. Does anyone understand Sumerian?" Hiro says. "Yes, at any given time, it appears that there are roughly ten people in the world who can read it." "Where do they work?" "One in Israel. One at the British Museum. One in Iraq. One at the University of Chicago. One at the University of Pennsylvania. And five at Rife Bible College in Houston, Texas." "Nice distribution.”"