A Quote by Neal Stephenson

One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for may people, is not that he's socially inept - because everybody's been there - but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.
I'd rather be around a passionate nerd than a non-passionate cool person. Because if you lack passion, your soul is diminishing by the second. You have to be passionate about something. Call it obsessed or whatever you want, but be obsessed about something. Obsessed people care. I'm passionate about so many things, it becomes an issue at certain points, but at least you have the ability to feel that much about something.
If people are failing, they look inept. If people are succeeding, they look strong and good and competent. That's the 'halo effect.' Your first impression of a thing sets up your subsequent beliefs. If the company looks inept to you, you may assume everything else they do is inept.
The central trait of sociopathy is a complete lack of conscience, which is very difficult for most people to get their heads around, because those of us who do have a conscience can't really imagine what it would be like if we didn't. Most people think that deep down everybody has a conscience, and it turns out that's just not true.
I think most interesting people are socially awkward even if they're able to hide it most of the time. If Henry Darger hadn't been a shut-in would we love him so much? Any act that we do in private is amazing and profound because it is private. You don't have to worry about being socially awkward in the privacy of your own home... well, unless I show up.
When you're younger, you see the people who are in power and think they must have that position because of some degree of skill. And as you get older, you realize it's not true, that most people in those positions are absolutely inept. And this naturally makes you feel better about yourself.
My first AIDS campaign was in 1985. There was this dark cloud, everybody was socially inspired - we hadn't seen social consciousness like that since the '60s - but most people were talking about hunger in Africa. Nobody was talking about this really ominous circumstance here in the U.S. because of this fear of stigma.
I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most people talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're talking about the secrets they've been told or haven't been told. They're talking about intimate things, family things, love things," that nice old lady said to me. "Mr. Hoenikker had all those things in his life, the way every living person has to, but they weren't the main things with him.
I've always been the most vocal person socially about things that I feel are important.
You always worry that everybody is secretly talking about you behind your back, everybody is secretly making fun of your voice, your figure, the way that you are during puberty, but it turned out, in real life, everybody was. On movie sets, they were all talking about these things, because they had to.
True self-esteem is realizing that you are valuable because you were born. No matter where you came from, what color your skin is, what people say about your family or what mean things people may have done to you, because you were born, you are important and you matter.
Anger about the wars isn't the only reason voters support Mr. Trump. But his willingness to say what other G.O.P. candidates won't reflects what people like most about him: his complete break with the party elite.
I just try to be true to myself and write about things I'm passionate about. I think what most people don't like about movies is they can tell that most movies are a product, and they don't mean that much to the people who make them.
Solitude in the city is about the lack of other people or rather their distance beyond a door or wall, but in remote places it isn’t an absence but the presence of something else, a kind of humming silence in which solitude seems as natural to your species as to any other, words strange rocks you may or may not turn over.
There may be a new album, and there may not. Right now, we're encouraging bootlegging because there have been some great live things that ended up on the Internet. Rather than try to stop it, we like it. If nobody gave a crap about you, they wouldn't bother to bootleg you.
The things I connected with Zurich about were that he is a selfless person; he wants the best for everybody. He wants to see everybody win. And he's a strong person. A lot of the time, he doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve because he wants to stay strong for his line brothers, his family, his mom, everybody. I feel like I can relate to that.
I love to ask people questions. I want to know everything about them, even things that may be seemingly socially inappropriate.
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