Then suddenly they were passing through a rather nice town, which she learned was Sandpoint, and which had all the indicia – brewpub, art gallery, Pilates, Thai restaurant – of a place where Blue State people would go to enjoy a high standard of living while maintaining a nonstop connectivity and assuaging their guilty consciences re global warming, fair trade, and the regrettable side of Manifest Destiny.
– Neal Stephenson, Reamde, William Morrow, Harper Collins, New York, 2011, p. 879
When she was awake, her energy and the force of her personality shone through her face and made it difficult to know anything about what she really looked like, somewhat in the way that you couldn’t see the glass envelope of a lightbulb when it was turned on.
– Ibid., p. 693
