Top 450 Ernest Cline Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “Competition brings out the best in me.”

— Ernest Cline

402. “I don’t want to work with you.” I leveled a finger at him. “You give me the creeps. But if your superiors are willing to fire your ass and give me your position, I’m in. It’s a done deal.” Silence.”

— Ernest Cline

403. “WarGames had been one of Halliday’s all-time favorite movies. Which was why I had watched it over three dozen times.”

— Ernest Cline

404. “She did it to get the extra food vouchers from the government every month. Most of the time, I had to find food on my own.”

— Ernest Cline

405. “The guy had no sense of decorum.”

— Ernest Cline

406. “At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star Wars droid sound samples mixed in.”

— Ernest Cline

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

— Ernest Cline

408. “Admittedly, all the time I’d had to devote to the game had shaved a full point off my grade average, and it had probably cost me my relationship with Ellen, too.”

— Ernest Cline

409. “I didn’t get to find out who or what Kilgore was, because my father walked over and closed Milo’s pod canopy for him. Then he walked back over and watched nervously as I raised his QComm and placed the video call to my mother.”

— Ernest Cline

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

— Ernest Cline

411. “It’s cold as balls in here!”

— Ernest Cline

412. “Now everyone could be on TV, every second of every day, whether or not anyone was watching.”

— Ernest Cline

413. “When I tried to access one of the other entertainment libraries, Vintage Movies, the system informed me that I wouldn’t be granted access to a wider selection of entertainment options until I had received an above-average rating in three consecutive employee performance reviews. Then the system asked me if I wanted more information on the Indentured Employee Entertainment Reward Program. I didn’t.”

— Ernest Cline

414. “The real van that I’d used as my hideout had been extracted from the junk pile and airlifted to Columbus, so it could be put on display in the GSS Museum.”

— Ernest Cline

415. “That’s the first rule of online romances, pal. No one ever looks anything like their avatar.”

— Ernest Cline

416. “Newer, faster, or more versatile components were always being released, so I was constantly spending large chunks of my meager income on upgrades.”

— Ernest Cline

417. “I wasn’t some dilettante.”

— Ernest Cline

418. “This is your QComm,” he explained. “It’s a Quantum Communicator – basically a smartphone with unlimited range. It will work anywhere in the world – or in outer space.” He smiled. “They also have insanely fast Internet access and Bluetooth capability. I already imported all of your contacts, photos, and music from your iPhone, so you’re all set up.”

— Ernest Cline

419. “I took control of a Happy Helpdesk avatar, a cookie-cutter Ken doll that I used to take tech-support calls. 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

420. “I also have a habit of overeating when I was depressed or frustrated, which was most of the time.”

— Ernest Cline

421. “But we also figured out how to do science, which helped us develop technology.”

— Ernest Cline

422. “I blinked and looked again – but it was still out there, a shiny chrome disc zigzagging around in the sky. My eyes struggled to track the object through a series of increasingly fast, impossibly sharp turns that would have juiced a human being, had there been any aboard. The disc streaked toward the distant horizon, then came to an instantaneous stop just above it. It hovered there motionless over the distant tree line for a few seconds, as if scanning.”

— Ernest Cline

423. “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.”

— Ernest Cline

424. “Ray seemed to subsist primarily on a diet of high-fructose junk food and old videogames. It was hard not to love the guy. Back.”

— Ernest Cline

425. “I was a man of science, even if I did usually get a C in it.”

— Ernest Cline

426. “The Great Recession was now entering its third decade, and unemployment was still at a record high. Even the fast-food joints in my neighborhood had a two-year waiting list for job applicants.”

— Ernest Cline

427. “Instead, he picked up his bass guitar, and, in what seemed like an odd coincidence, he began to play a solo version of “One of These Days” while staring up at the stars projected on the dome over our heads. Then I noticed a practice set list taped to the floor in front of him, and saw that several of the songs listed there were tracks I knew from my father’s old mixtapes.”

— Ernest Cline

428. “The half dozen GSS employees inside all avoided making direct eye contact. I could guess what all of them were thinking: Meet the new boss, weird as the old boss.”

— Ernest Cline

429. “Her instinct was always to act out of kindness and generosity instead of self-interest. She was a better person than me, and I was a better person when I was around her.”

— Ernest Cline

430. “Space – First coin-op arcade game – port of Spacewar!”

— Ernest Cline

431. “Great, Wade, I thought. You just called her laugh “dorky.” Real smooth.”

— Ernest Cline

432. “OK, Arty,” I said.”

— Ernest Cline

433. “I fired a last volley of plasma bolts at the unprotected enemy ship, which was already vibrating from the buildup of power in its reactor core, and held my breath as they streaked toward it, silently praying to Crom that they would reach the Glaive and destroy it before it finished transforming itself into a weapon of mass destruction.”

— Ernest Cline

434. “Zum ersten Mal in meinem Leben konnte mir die OASIS gestohlen bleiben.”

— Ernest Cline

435. “I don’t care if Spielberg directed.”

— Ernest Cline

436. “Knavery?” Art3mis said after she’d finished reading it. “Were you using a thesaurus when you wrote this?”

— Ernest Cline

437. “Don’t say that!” I was starting to cry and didn’t bother hiding it from her. “Is it because I told you I’ve never had a real girlfriend? And that I’m a virgin? Because-.”

— Ernest Cline

438. “According to him, the firmware on our OIVs has not been altered in any way – it just isn’t functioning properly now, due to the changes in Anorak’s infirmware.”

— Ernest Cline

439. “You don’t need to sell me on anything, Wade,” she said. “You’re my best friend. My favorite person.” With.”

— Ernest Cline

440. “The Solar Federation was controlled by a group of “priests,” who are described in Part II of the song, titled “The Temples of Syrinx.” Its lyrics told me exactly where the Crystal Key was hidden: We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx Our great computers fill the hallowed halls. We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx All the gifts of life are held within our walls. There was a planet in Sector Twenty-one named Syrinx. That was where I was headed now.”

— Ernest Cline

441. “Og gave the Sega Ninja cabinet an awkward pat, as if it were an unfamiliar Labrador. Then he shoved both his hands into his pockets and grinned at me like a lovestruck idiot. He looked as if his pupils might change into cartoon hearts at any second.”

— Ernest Cline

442. “Halliday’s favorite sci-fi novels, TV shows, and movies.”

— Ernest Cline

443. “It was Art3mis. She wore a suit of scaled gunmetal-blue armor that looked more sci-fi than fantasy. Twin blaster pistols were slung low on her hips in quickdraw holsters, and there was a long, curved elvish sword in a scabbard across her back. She wore fingerless Road Warrior–style racing gloves and a pair of classic Ray-Ban shades. Overall, she seemed to be going for a sort of mid-’80s postapocalyptic cyberpunk girl-next-door look. And it was working for me, in a big way. In a word: hot.”

— Ernest Cline

444. “My father’s face contorted in pain, and that was when I turned and walked away, well out of earshot, to let them talk in private – and to avoid a crying jag of my own.”

— Ernest Cline

445. “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.”

— Ernest Cline

446. “Something Daito had left to me in his will.”

— Ernest Cline

447. “And in addition to the credits, my avatar received an equal number of experience points for obtaining the coins.”

— Ernest Cline

448. “That was the reason a lot of our own users had started to refer to GSS as the “New Sixers” and me, Aech, Shoto, and Samantha as the “Four Nerds of the Apocalypse.”

— Ernest Cline

449. “Ray, we don’t have much time,” I said. “We need to access the EDA intranet node hidden here in the store. It’s an emergency.” Ray only hesitated for a split second. “Behind the UFO poster on the back wall.” I turned and located the one he was talking about – a framed reprint of Mulder’s “I Want to Believe” poster from The X-Files. I took it down, revealing what appeared to be a small titanium safe embedded in the brick wall behind it, with a keypad at its center.”

— Ernest Cline

450. “You’re just dead, your brain stops working, and then you’re not around to ask annoying questions anymore.”

— Ernest Cline