Top 450 Ernest Cline Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “The ability to mute my peers was one of my favorite things about attending school online, and I took advantage of it almost daily.”

— Ernest Cline

302. “I thought. You’re going to turn it into a fascist corporate theme park.”

— Ernest Cline

303. “The moment I began searching for the egg, the future no longer seemed so bleak.”

— Ernest Cline

304. “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. I.”

— Ernest Cline

305. “Someone had keyed my car.”

— Ernest Cline

306. “I’d finally gained enough distance from my addiction to realize something. Human beings were never meant to participate in a worldwide social network comprised of billions of people.”

— Ernest Cline

307. “So these aliens, they really have Glaive Fighters?”

— Ernest Cline

308. “Gut’, sagte er und zwinkerte mir zu. ‘Mach nicht denselben Fehler wie ich. Versteck dich nicht ewig hier drin.”

— Ernest Cline

309. “On the few occasions that Halliday agreed to do interviews, his behavior came off as bizarre, even by game-designer standards. He was hyperkinetic, aloof, and so socially inept that the interviewers often came away with the impression he was mentally ill.”

— Ernest Cline

310. “I was devastated. I was still in love with her.”

— Ernest Cline

311. “He was dressed in a plaid bathrobe and bunny slippers.”

— Ernest Cline

312. “Star Trek? Oh, I did my homework. TOS, TNG, DS9. Even Voyager and Enterprise. I watched them all in chronological order. The movies, too. Phasers locked on target.”

— Ernest Cline

313. “I unclenched them. Then I glanced back at Ellen, to see if she was watching all of this. She was staring at Casey with a helpless expression, and her eyes were filled with pity.”

— Ernest Cline

314. “Some people define themselves by railing against all of the things they hate, while explaining why everyone else should hate it too.”

— Ernest Cline

315. “Just a maintenance tech here, folks, heading home after a long night of rebooting routers. That’s all. I am definitely not an indent making a daring escape with ten zettabytes of stolen company data in his pocket. Nosiree.”

— Ernest Cline

316. “When my ship reached Syrinx, I saw the twin moons, By-Tor and Snow Dog, that orbited the planet. Their names were taken from another classic Rush song.”

— Ernest Cline

317. “Cameron, Gilliam, Jackson, Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And, of course, Kevin Smith.”

— Ernest Cline

318. “A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.”

— Ernest Cline

319. “I also absorbed the complete filmographies of each of his favorite directors. Cameron, Gilliam, Jackson, Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And, of course, Kevin Smith.”

— Ernest Cline

320. “I should be thanking you. I haven’t had this much fun in decades!”

— Ernest Cline

321. “To win the videogame of life you just have to try to make the experience of being forced to play it as pleasant as possible, for yourself, and for all of the other players you encounter in your travels.”

— Ernest Cline

322. “I usually muted him, but I still recognized his Philly accent, and the cocky attitude that seemed to come along with it.”

— Ernest Cline

323. “You’re going to die. We all die. That’s just how it is.”

— Ernest Cline

324. “But these were real aliens we were fighting – sentient beings with highly advanced technology, intent on destroying us. And we were outnumbered thousands to one. We should’ve been dead a hundred times already. Were humans really just better at war than they were, or all this time, had the aliens been throwing the game?”

— Ernest Cline

325. “Year after year, my eyes would scan the lunchroom like a T-1000, searching for a clique that might accept me.”

— Ernest Cline

326. “So the real jaw-dropping news that January morning, the news that had everyone from Toronto to Tokyo crapping in their cornflakes, concerned the contents of Halliday’s last will and testament, and the fate of his vast fortune.”

— Ernest Cline

327. “I stopped moving forward and the sound of hoofbeats also ceased, but not until a few seconds later. I turned around and saw the source of the sound. It wasn’t a horse. It was a man banging two coconut halves together.”

— Ernest Cline

328. “Says you, assface. It has some great moments.” “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It doesn’t. It’s even worse than that first Ewok flick, Caravan of Courage. They shoulda called it Caravan of Suck.”

— Ernest Cline

329. “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

330. “Jeez. Cool your tool.”

— Ernest Cline

331. “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.”

— Ernest Cline

332. “This avatar appeared inside a huge virtual call center, inside a virtual cubicle, sitting at a virtual desk, in front of a virtual computer, wearing a virtual phone headset. I thought of this place as my own private virtual hell.”

— Ernest Cline

333. “Well, I’m no Yngwie Malmsteen or anything,” I said. “I’m still learning.”

— Ernest Cline

334. “Christ! Haven’t any of you rewatched The Matrix lately? Or Sword Art Online?”

— Ernest Cline

335. “On the floor, directly underneath my suspended haptic chair, was my Okagami Runaround omnidirectional treadmill.”

— Ernest Cline

336. “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.”

— Ernest Cline

337. “Once it was verified, a tiny augmented reality display extended from the front of the headset and then locked into place in front of my left eye, like a monocle. Several paragraphs of text appeared, floating in the air in front of me, superimposed in the center of my vision:.”

— Ernest Cline

338. “Cats with a serious marble deficiency.”

— Ernest Cline

339. “Parzival: Farewell, Art3mis. Sweet dreams.”

— Ernest Cline

340. “Maybe it was just as I had always secretly feared: The apple had fallen right next to the Crazy Tree.”

— Ernest Cline

341. “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.”

— Ernest Cline

342. “The vast wasteland of television programming had finally reached its zenith, and the average person was no longer limited to fifteen minutes of fame.”

— Ernest Cline

343. “My haptic suit did its best to simulate the sensation of torrents of falling water striking my body, but it felt more like someone pounding on my head, shoulders, and back with a bundle of sticks.”

— Ernest Cline

344. “Several Sonic the Hedgehog games involved a quest to collect seven “Chaos Emeralds” that could be harnessed to obtain special powers. Inside the OASIS, dozens of different quests on Mobius Prime allowed you to collect the seven Chaos Emeralds, and I’d completed all of them. But if there was a way to trade the emeralds for one of the shards, I still hadn’t discovered it.”

— Ernest Cline

345. “His paternal tone irked me no end, and that helped to steel my resolve. I couldn’t sell out the the Sixers.”

— Ernest Cline

346. “The Europans were building an armada, just like the Sobrukai. But much closer to Earth. They had Foundry Ships orbiting their moon, cranking out fighters and drones – just like those I’d spotted above Sobrukai last night.”

— Ernest Cline

347. “He chuckled softly. I wanted to sock him in the face.”

— Ernest Cline

348. “I didn’t try to run. I didn’t even move. I just stood there and let justice take its course.”

— Ernest Cline

349. “At first, I couldn’t understand why the media was making such a big deal of the 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.”

— Ernest Cline

350. “Out here on the perimeter, there are no stars.”

— Ernest Cline