"I was like, "Oh yeah, that's kind of like me. I'm always living in the past." When I was really young, I thought I was from the 18th century and I was trapped in this life, and I was so miserable and figuring how I could get back. Maybe I was just picking up on ideas of past lives, but I really did believe that I was from another era."

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I try to find a style that matches the book. In the Baroque Cycle, I got infected with the prose style of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, which is my favorite era. It's recent enough that it is easy to read - easier than Elizabethan English - but it's pre-Victorian and so doesn't have the pomposity that is often a problem with 19th-century English prose. It is earthy and direct and frequently hilarious.

— Neal Stephenson