"Hackworth had made efforts to learn a few Chinese characters, and to aquaint himself with some basics of their intellectual system, but in general, he liked his transcendence out in plain sight where he could keep an eye on it- say, in a nice stained-glass window- not woven through the fabric of life like gold threads through a brocade."
-from The Diamond Age

Neal Stephenson is such a good writer, and reading this book again, this time with considerably more knowledge about Chinese history and culture, is helping me gain that much more of an appoociation for his craft. Here's another one:

"Judge Fang had recently been plagued with doubts as to whether his life made any sense at all within the context of the Coastal Republic, a nation almost completely devoid of virtue.
If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy."