Quotes from Ernest Cline

Azért hoztam létre az OASIS-t, mert soha nem találtam a helyem a valóságban. Nem tudtam, hogyan teremtsek kapcsolatot az emberekkel. Egész életemben féltem. Egészen addig, amíg fel nem fogtam, hogy hamarosan vége. Akkor értettem meg, hogy néha, bármennyire is rémisztÅ' és fájdalmas, a valóság az egyetlen hely, ahol igazi boldogságra találhatunk. És a valóság valós.

Ha lehetÅ'séged van a boldogságra a valóságban, akkor élj vele.

I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing '80s cover tunes on ukuleles.

In a way, these old role-playing games had been the first virtual-reality simulations, created long before computers were powerful enough to do the job. In those days, if you wanted to escape to another world, you had to create it yourself, using your brain, some paper, pencils, dice, and a few rule books.

world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect." Rumors

Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star.

And after you pull off that miracle, you can genetically engineer a bunch of Smurfs and unicorns to frolic around this new perfect world you've created.

you'll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong.

and now it was just a waiting game to see who would unleash it first, probably in an army of sentient aerial drones and battle telebots that said "Roger, Roger" to one another while machine-gunning civilian populations. That was, if we didn't nuke ourselves into oblivion first.

flash of silver as the craft streaked laterally

deviant soccer moms in Minnesota.

His proclamation was met with a deafening roar of shouted threats, insults, and colorful profanity.

We played vintage board games, watched movies, and listened to music. We talked for hours. Long, rambling conversations about everything under the sun. Spending time with her was intoxicating. We seemed to have everything in common. We shared the same interests. We were driven by the same goal. She got all of my jokes. She made me laugh. She made me think. She changed the way I saw the world. I'd never had such a powerful, immediate connection with another human being before.

You could shove it up your ass and pretend you're a corn dog." COURTESY VIOLATION—RESPONSE MUTED—VIOLATION LOGGED.

with humanity? If this was how we treated each other, how much kindness could we possibly show to some race of bug-eyed beings from beyond?

The sorts of movies my late father had been nuts about.

The once-great country into which I'd been born now resembled its former self in name only. It didn't matter who was in charge. Those people were rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and everyone knew it.

At a game like this, a gifted human player could always triumph over the game's AI, because software couldn't improvise. It could either react randomly, or in a limited number of predetermined ways, based on a finite number of preprogrammed conditions. This was an axiom in videogames, and would be until humans invented true artificial intelligence.

was sticking.

The bay doors embedded on the starboard side of the Doolittle's bow irised open and the Icebreaker launched out of it, accompanied by a dense escort of three dozen fighters.

obsessive adherence to routine and preoccupation with a few obscure areas of interest led many psychologists to conclude that Halliday had suffered from Asperger's syndrome, or from some other form of high-functioning autism.) Despite

Cuando Halliday todavía dirigía la empresa, GSS había logrado que prevaleciera el derecho a no desvelar la identidad de los usuarios de Oasis tras un fallo histórico del Tribunal Supremo. Cuando

Well, I'm no Yngwie Malmsteen or anything," I said. "I'm still learning.

But I refused to give up. Until an avatar reached Halliday's Easter egg, anything was still possible. Like any classic videogame, the Hunt had simply reached a new, more difficult level. A new level often required an entirely new strategy. I began to formulate a plan. A bold, outrageous plan that would require epic amounts of luck to pull off.