Top 450 Ernest Cline Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “I was just starting out, trying to become a screenwriter, and I became the Austin slam champion three times. For a nerdy, kind of a socially awkward guy, that did wonders for my self esteem.”

— Ernest Cline

202. “I’d programmed and dropped in a few back-to-back flicks starring Gamera, my favorite giant flying turtle.”

— Ernest Cline

203. “Ray was in his usual spot behind the counter, hunched over “Big Bootay,” his ancient overclocked gaming PC.”

— Ernest Cline

204. “The only thing crazier than hallucinating a fictional videogame spaceship would be to blame it on a frosted breakfast pastry.”

— Ernest Cline

205. “I moved from one room to the next, mowing down every NPC in my path. The guards returned fire, but their bullets pinged harmlessly off my armor. I never ran out of ammo, because each time I fired a round, a new round was teleported into the bottom of the clip. My bullet bill this month was going to be huge.”

— Ernest Cline

206. “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.”

— Ernest Cline

207. “I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal. – Groucho Marx.”

— Ernest Cline

208. “Why would real aliens behave exactly like videogame simulations of themselves?”

— Ernest Cline

209. “Many of the gunters on the front lines took an involuntary step backward. A few others turned and ran for their lives.”

— Ernest Cline

210. “I knew Knotcher was trying to push my buttons. Unfortunately, he’d pushed the big red one first.”

— Ernest Cline

211. “It occurred to me then that for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had absolutely no desire to log back into the OASIS.”

— Ernest Cline

212. “The farther I went, the more confident I became.”

— Ernest Cline

213. “And then it was on like Red Dawn.”

— Ernest Cline

214. “If it weren’t for Tolkien, all of us nerds would’ve had a lot less fun during the last ninety years.”

— Ernest Cline

215. “We were at the edge of space. The boundary I’d dreamed of crossing my entire life. I’d never really believed I’d get the chance to do it during my lifetime – let alone today, when I should’ve been in my first-period civics class.”

— Ernest Cline

216. “You really think it’s that simple?” I said. “That you can just write a check for two hundred and forty billion dollars and fix all the world’s problems?”

— Ernest Cline

217. “It felt wonderful. Like being struck by lightning.”

— Ernest Cline

218. “I’ve never really collected anything other than old Atari cartridges. I only had, like, 12 Atari games as a kid, so at some point in my 20s I decided I was going to own all of them.”

— Ernest Cline

219. “That was what saved me, I think. Suddenly I’d found something worth doing. A dream worth chasing. For the last five years, the Hunt had given me a goal and purpose. A quest to fulfill. A reason to get up in the morning. Something to look forward to.”

— Ernest Cline

220. “It’s the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. We’re out of oil. we’ve wrecked the climate. Famine, poverty and disease are widespread.”

— Ernest Cline

221. “You could shove it up your ass and pretend you’re a corn dog.”

— Ernest Cline

222. “Now, thanks to the ONI, I could. And I did.”

— Ernest Cline

223. “Finally, I want to thank all of the writers, filmmakers, actors, artists, musicians, programmers, game designers, and geeks whose work I’ve paid tribute to in this story. These people have all entertained and enlightened me, and I hope that – like Halliday’s hunt – this book will inspire others to seek out their creations.”

— Ernest Cline

224. “A mission where you have to blow up a Death Star while being attacked by two Borg Cubes inside an asteroid field?”

— Ernest Cline

225. “Many species lack the ability to defy their own animal instincts and allow their intellect to prevail.”

— Ernest Cline

226. “I knew Samantha wasn’t going to approve.”

— Ernest Cline

227. “Raw neural input, from a brain that was not my own.”

— Ernest Cline

228. “As I stared out at the grim skyline, a bright sliver of the sun peeked over the horizon. Watching it rise, I performed a mental ritual: Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.”

— Ernest Cline

229. “The mind is the only thing about human beings that’s worth anything. Why does it have to be tied to a bag of skin, blood, hair, meat, bones and tubes? No wonder people can’t get anything done, stuck for life with a parasite that has to be stuffed with food and protected from weather and germs all the time. And the fool thing wears out anyway – no matter how much you stuff and protect it! – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.”

— Ernest Cline

230. “She grinned and shook her head. “Chaotic Neutral, sugar.”

— Ernest Cline

231. “Standing there, under the bleak fluorescents of my tiny one-room apartment, there was no escaping the truth. In real life, I was nothing but an antisocial hermit. A recluse. A pale-skinned pop culture–obsessed geek. An agoraphobic shut-in, with no real friends, family, or genuine human contact. I was just another sad, lost, lonely soul, wasting his life on a glorified videogame.”

— Ernest Cline

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

— Ernest Cline

233. “And sometimes, when you think you’ve finally reached the end of the game, suddenly you find yourself standing at the start of a whole new level. A level that you’ve never seen before. And the only thing you can do is keep right on playing. Because the game that is your life still isn’t over yet. And there’s no telling how far you might be able to get, what you might discover, or who you might meet when you get there.”

— Ernest Cline

234. “I drew one of my blasters.”

— Ernest Cline

235. “To quote Sarah Connor: ‘You’re all dead already.’ You, your friends, your customers – all of you. You poisoned your own planet, destroyed its climate, defiled its ecosystem, and killed off all of its biodiversity.” He pointed at each of us. “You’re going to be extinct soon, too, by your hands. And you know it. That’s why most of you spend every second you can wired up to the OASIS. You’ve already given up, and now you’re all just waiting around to die.”

— Ernest Cline

236. “I could barely believe myself. IOI had actually tried to kill me. To prevent me from winning a videogame contest. It was insane.”

— Ernest Cline

237. “It is the world’s first fully functional noninvasive brain-computer interface. It allows an OASIS user to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel their avatar’s virtual environment, via signals transmitted directly into their cerebral cortex. The headset’s sensor array also monitors and interprets its wearer’s brain activity, allowing them to control their OASIS avatar just as they do their physical body – simply by thinking about it.”

— Ernest Cline

238. “My grades suffered. I didn’t care.”

— Ernest Cline

239. “El Riesgo Siempre Vive.”

— Ernest Cline

240. “MTFBWYA, Parzival.”

— Ernest Cline

241. “Life was like an extremely difficult, horribly unbalanced video game. But sometimes the game can have a surprise ending. And sometimes, when you think you’ve reached the end of the game, suddenly you find yourself standing in front of a whole new level. A level you’ve never seen before. And the only thing you can do is keep right on playing.”

— Ernest Cline

242. “Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest.”

— Ernest Cline

243. “We were witnessing the dawn of the posthuman era. The Singularity by way of simulacra and simulation.”

— Ernest Cline

244. “I wasn’t ready for any of that. I was still truly, madly, deeply in love with Samantha. And I was still reeling from losing my virginity to her just a few days earlier. I didn’t want to be unfaithful to her. I figured that cheating was cheating, whether it was live or it was Memorex.”

— Ernest Cline

245. “Then she snapped her fingers and we were standing on Europa, discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life beneath the moon’s icy crust. I.”

— Ernest Cline

246. “Reality didn’t feel any more real than the OASIS had just felt to me. My senses couldn’t discern between the two.”

— Ernest Cline

247. “I spotted a large bowl of fruit on the table – one that hadn’t been there before.”

— Ernest Cline

248. “Well, hello there!”

— Ernest Cline

249. “My avatar materialized in front of my locker on the second floor of my high school – the exact spot where I’d been standing when I’d logged out the night before.”

— Ernest Cline

250. “And sometimes, when you think you’ve finally reached the end of the game, suddenly you find yourself standing at the start of a whole new level.”

— Ernest Cline