Top 450 Ernest Cline Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “Ray seemed about to say something more when a boom shook the entire shuttle. I felt a rush of panic, thinking we’d just come under attack. Then I realized we’d just broken the sound barrier.”

— Ernest Cline

402. “NASA dubbed this spacecraft the Envoy I, and it reached Europa on the 9th of July, 1976 – the day humanity made its first direct contact with an alien intelligence.”

— Ernest Cline

403. “When the countdown clock hit the ninety-minute mark, we all gathered in front of the command station to watch the president of the United States address the nation from the Oval Office on live television. She smiled reassuringly at the camera, but the fear in her eyes was evident.”

— Ernest Cline

404. “Not only was this the first time a girl had ever given me her card, it was also, by far, the coolest contact card I had ever seen. “This is, by far, the coolest contact card I have ever seen,” I said. “Thank you!” I.”

— Ernest Cline

405. “For less than the cost of an iced latte, you could now safely experience just about anything that human beings could experience.”

— Ernest Cline

406. “Parzival: Nope. You got parents? Art3mis: They died. The flu. So I was raised by my grandparents. You got parentage? Parzival: No. Mine are dead too. Art3mis: It kinda sucks, doesn’t it? Not having your parents around. Parzival: Yeah. But a lot of people are worse off than me. Art3mis: I tell myself that all the time.”

— Ernest Cline

407. “Og led us through the mansion’s lavish front entrance. The lights were off inside, but instead of turning them on, Morrow took an honest-to-God torch off the wall and used it to illuminate our way.”

— Ernest Cline

408. “I tried my best to fit in. Year after year, my eyes would scan the lunchroom like a T-1000, searching for a clique that might accept me. But even the other outcasts wanted nothing to do with me. I was too weird, even for the weirdos. And girls? Talking to girls was out of the question. To me, they were like some exotic alien species, both beautiful and terrifying. Whenever I got near one of them, I invariably broke out in a cold sweat and lost the ability to speak in complete sentences.”

— Ernest Cline

409. “City-sized shopping malls were erected in the blink of an eye, and storefronts spread across planets like time-lapse footage of mold devouring an orange.”

— Ernest Cline

410. “I aimed my rocket eighty-eight right into the torrent of enemy fighters and fanned the trigger on my flight stick to fire off a rapid volley of plasma bolts.”

— Ernest Cline

411. “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.”

— Ernest Cline

412. “After all, I’d just won the contest to become his sole heir.”

— Ernest Cline

413. “Competition brings out the best in me.”

— Ernest Cline

414. “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.”

— Ernest Cline

415. “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

416. “Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation was a big place.”

— Ernest Cline

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

— Ernest Cline

418. “All of them have tentacles, like their mother! The youngest one in curls!” Diehl laughed. Cruz laughed. I laughed.”

— Ernest Cline

419. “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

420. “The sight suddenly drove home the fantastic isolation of the place.”

— Ernest Cline

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

— Ernest Cline

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

— Ernest Cline

423. “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

424. “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

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

— Ernest Cline

426. “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

427. “I wasn’t some dilettante.”

— Ernest Cline

428. “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

429. “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

430. “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

431. “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

432. “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

433. “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

434. “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

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

— Ernest Cline

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

— Ernest Cline

437. “OK, Arty,” I said.”

— Ernest Cline

438. “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

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

— Ernest Cline

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

— Ernest Cline

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

— Ernest Cline

442. “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

443. “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

444. “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

445. “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

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

— Ernest Cline

447. “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

448. “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

449. “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

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

— Ernest Cline