Life
Born on October 31, 1959 in Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson came from a family of engineers and hard scientists; his father is a professor of electrical engineering whose father was a physics professor. His mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, and her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1960 and then in 1966 to Ames, Iowa. He graduated from Ames High School in 1977.
Stephenson studied at Boston University, first specializing in physics, then switching to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe. He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in geography and a minor in physics. Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family.
Read more about this topic: Neal Stephenson
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)