Any property that's open to common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it.

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?

Middle class prosperity is lapidary; the flow of cash rounds and smooths a person like water does riverbed stones.

Clearly Mr. Drkh has had a long career of being the weirdest person in any given room, but he's about to go down in flames.

Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whisky, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.

This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.

They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.