So a lot of what you see in the Baroque Cycle is me wanting to be one of those guys. In the case of Anathem, I needed something that was more formal, less flashy, as if it had been translated from the classical language of another planet, but enlivened with slang terms that a teenage narrator would enjoy throwing around.
Neal StephensonPart of being a sentient human is the ability to anticipate others' mental states - to say "Fred's going to hate this but Jane would love it."
Neal StephensonI was trying to run something to ground that had come to my attention when I was working on the Baroque Cycle. That series, of course, was about the conflict between Newton and Leibniz. Leibniz developed a system of metaphysics called monadology, which looked pretty weird at the time and was promptly buried by Newtonian-style physics.
Neal StephensonYou should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake.
Neal StephensonWhat are letters?โ โKinda like mediaglyphics except theyโre all black, and theyโre tiny, they donโt move, theyโre old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use โem to make short words for long words.
Neal StephensonAn old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.
Neal Stephenson