Neal Stephenson

“Now I have a different perspective on it. America must look, to those poor little buggers down there, about the same as Crete looked to those poor Greek suckers. Except that there's no coercion involved. Those people down there give up their children willingly. Send them into the labyrinth by the millions to be eaten up. The Industry feeds on them and spits back images, sends out movies and TV programs, over my networks, images of wealth and exotic things beyond their wildest dreams, back to those people, and it gives them something to dream about, something to aspire to. And that is the function of the Raft. It's just a big old krill carrier.”

The warm-up band, Blunt Force Trauma

“Certain praxes were grandfathered in.

Atoms are like people. Get lots of them together, never know what they’ll do.

In the dark ages of my life, when I worked at Massachusetts Analytical Chemical Systems, or Mass Anal for short