Quotes from Ernest Cline

She used to make me wear earplugs at night so I wouldn't hear her in the next room, talking dirty to tricks in other time zones.

Normally, the newsfeeds didn't interrupt everyone's interactive sitcoms and soap operas unless something really major had happened. Like the outbreak of some new killer virus, or another major city vanishing in a mushroom cloud. Big stuff like that.

It was still pretty dark down here, so I took out my flashlight and headed east, weaving my way through the dark maze, doing my best to remain unseen while being careful to avoid tripping over a shopping cart, engine block, or one of the other pieces of junk littering the narrow alleys between the stacks.

To quote the Almanac: "People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.

I'd never had such a powerful, immediate connection with another human being before.

Peu importaient les responsables au pouvoir, ils se contentaient de modifier l'agencement des transats sur le pont du Titanic, et personne ne se faisait d'illusions.

Good luck, Parzival," he said. "And thanks. Thanks for playing my game.

I preferred to crash in the laundry room anyway. It was warm, it afforded me a limited amount of privacy, and the wireless reception wasn't too bad. And, as an added bonus, the room smelled like liquid detergent and fabric softener. The rest of the trailer reeked of cat piss and abject poverty.

final scene of Anorak's Invitation, by the way.

The same goes for Marie Curie. Before she discovered radium, you can be certain she first discovered the little man in the canoe. It

About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

She used to have to force me to log out every night, because I never wanted to return to the real world. Because the real world sucked.

AA 241:87—I would argue that masturbation is the human animal's most important adaptation. The very cornerstone of our technological civilization.

The "Dorky Girl Fantasies" trilogy (Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and Some Kind of Wonderful) and the "Dorky Boy Fantasies" trilogy (The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

Pues sabes una cosa? Que tú también eres como siempre creí que serías: feo como el culo.

billionaire's death. After all, the people of Planet Earth had other concerns. The ongoing energy crisis. Catastrophic climate change. Widespread famine, poverty, and disease. Half a dozen wars. You know: "dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!" Normally, the newsfeeds didn't interrupt everyone's interactive sitcoms and soap operas unless something really major had happened. Like the outbreak of some new killer virus, or another major

On the day the Hunt began, the day I'd decided to become a gunter, I'd renamed my avatar Parzival, after the knight of Arthurian legend who had found the Holy Grail.

For me, school had been a Darwinian exercise. A daily gauntlet of ridicule, abuse, and isolation.

Not trusting my instincts any further, I loaded up a piece of high-end avatar dance software called Travoltra, which I'd downloaded and tested earlier that evening. The program took control of Parzival's movements, synching them up with the music, and all four of my limbs were transformed into undulating cosine waves. Just like that, I became a dancing fool. Art3mis

all dressed in mid-1980s attire. A woman with a giant ozone-depleting hairdo bobbed her head to an oversize Walkman. A

Bester, Bradbury, Haldeman, Heinlein, Tolkien, Vance, Gibson, Gaiman, Scalzi, Zelazny.

Grond, the Hammer of the Underworld

Those stories you heard? About going to a wonderful place called 'heaven' where there is no more pain or death and you live forever in a state of perpetual happiness? Also total bullshit. Just like all that God stuff. There's no evidence of a heaven and there never was. We made that up too. Wishful thinking. So

You had to be careful whenever you entered a new zone or sector. You had to be prepared. But like I said, I didn't have that problem. I was stuck at school.