What's hard, in hacking as in fiction, is not writing, it's deciding what to write.

All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us.

Of persons I will say this: it is difficult to tell when they are running aright but easy to see when something has gone awry.

An 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.

...your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.

The hour of noon has passed,' said Judge Fang. 'Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I actually don't think that there is a connection between the survival instinct and a hunger for immortality.