“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bomc,' I said. 'We have a protractor.'
Okay, I'll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string.”
    
    
    
            Cord and Erasmas, Part 6, "Peregrin" 
Source: Anathem (2008) 
Context: “Do you need transportation? Tools? Stuff?”
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
“Okay, I’ll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string.”
“That’d be great.”
        
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Neal Stephenson 167
American science fiction writer 1959Related quotes
 
                            
                        
                        
                        “Pull up the shades so I can see New York. I don't want to go home in the dark.”
                                        
                                        Last words, quoting a 1907 song by Harry Williams. (5 June 1910) Quoted in O. Henry Biography, ch. 9, Charles Alphonso Smith (1916). 
Variant: Turn up the lights — I don't want to go home in the dark.
                                    
 
                            
                        
                        
                        
                                        
                                        Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 169-170. 
1926
                                    
 
                            
                        
                        
                        2010s, 2016, January, Speech at Liberty University (18 January 2016)
 
                            
                        
                        
                        “I have a weakness for any piece in excess of my opponent's numbers - from pawn to queen.”
Quoted in Vik L Vasilev, "Tigran Petrosian His Life and Games" (Batsford, London, 1974) p. 166.
 
                            
                        
                        
                        As quoted in "Brigitte Lin, a timeless national treasure" in Taipei Times (15 May 2018) https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2018/05/15/2003693091
 
        
     
                            