It was a bit too aggressive to be a reverie and too abstract to be a h — The Diamond Age

"Princess Nell stared out over the waves for a while, then looked Carl in the eye and said quietly, "I accept your credentials and request that you convey my warm thanks and regard to Her Majesty, along with my apologies that circumstances prevent me from composing a more formal response to her kind letter, which at any other time would naturally be my highest priority." "I shall do so at the earliest opportunity, Your Majesty," Carl Hollywood said. Hearing these words, Princess Nell looked a bit unsteady…Carl realized that she had never been addressed in this way before."

"The bells of St. Marks were ringing changes up on the mountain when Bud skated over to the mod parlor to upgrade his skull gun."

"Along with many other Midwesterners, Finkle-McGraw put in a few weeks building levees out of sandbags and plastic sheeting. Once again he was struck by the national media coverage—reporters from the coasts kept showing up and announcing, with some bewilderment, that there had been no looting. ... Finkle-McGraw began to develop an opinion that was to shape his political views in later years, namely, that while people were not genetically different, they were culturally as different as they could possibly be, and that some cultures were simply better than others. This was not a subjective value judgment, merely an observation that some cultures thrived and expanded while others failed. It was a view implicitly shared by nearly everyone but, in those days, never voiced."

"And what makes one mans life more interesting than another’s?" "In general, I should say that we find unpredictable or novel things more interesting." …"You yourself said that the engineers in the Bespoke department—the very best—had led interesting lives, rather than coming from the straight and narrow. Which implies a correlation, does it not?” "Clearly." "This implies, does it not, that in order to raise a generation of children who can reach their full potential, we must find a way to make their lives interesting.”"

"Whats a matter compiler?" "We call it the M.C. for short." "Why?" "Because M.C. stands for matter compiler, or so they say." "Why?" "It just does. In letters, I guess." "What are letters?" "Kinda like mediaglyphics except theyre all black, and theyre tiny, they dont move, theyre old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use em to make short words for long words."

"Buds relationship with the female sex was governed by a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged theories, overheard scraps of conversation, half-remembered pieces of bad advice, and fragments of no-doubt exaggerated anecdotes that amounted to rank superstition."