Quotes from Ernest Cline

I felt like a kid standing in the world's greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.

That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it's also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.

I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing '80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn't part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.

As we continued to talk, going through the motions of getting to know each other, I realized that we already did know each other, as well as any two people could. We'd known each other for years, in the most intimate way possible. We'd connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a dear friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.

I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.

I was watching a collection of vintage '80s cereal commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes.

A river of words flowed between us.

She grinned. "Don't you want to build a huge interstellar spaceship, load it full of videogames, junk food, and comfy couches, and then get the hell out of here?" "I'm up for that, too," I said. "if it means I get to spend the rest of my life with you.

The Facts were right there waiting for me,hidden in old books written by people who weren't afraid to be honest

Virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation.

You know you've totally screwed up your life when your whole world turns to shit and the only person you have to talk to is your system agent software!

I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: GAME OVER.

Continue your quest by taking the test Yes, but what test? What test was I supposed to take? The Kobayashi Maru? The Pepsi Challenge? Could the clue have been any more vague?

I'd spent my entire life overdosing on uncut escapism, willingly allowing fantasy to become my reality.

So I'm supposed to believe you're one of those mythical guys who only cares about a woman's personality, and not about the package it comes in?

If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It's just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.

I was 7 years old when the '80s began and 17 years old when they ended, so it was an incredibly formative decade for me.

VR really changes everything for flight because the old simulators for the PC were 2D, and you couldn't look around inside the cockpit and learn the controls or even track other planes through the cockpit.

I've been to Oculus a few times to do book signings and things there, and they tell me 'Ready Player One' is, like, required reading for new employees.

I don't even think I was quite a year old. My mother was maybe seven months pregnant with my little brother. I was sucked out of her arms, and she landed 75 yards away from our trailer and had a ruptured disc. The tornado set me down on top of this pile of corrugated lumber and scrap metal.

I think it's a bit silly to brand the Internet as the 'downfall of youth.'

In a zombie apocalypse movie, nobody's ever seen a zombie movie. Or in an alien invasion movie, nobody has ever seen an alien invasion movie, like 'Independence Day.'

Gibson wrote 'Neuromancer' on a typewriter, you know, before the technology he was writing about existed.

I don't know if the '80s were unique, but we certainly got original, groundbreaking stuff at the time with movies like 'Back to the Future' and 'Star Wars' - movies that became classics.