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William Gibson Quotes
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William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans—a "combination of lowlife and high tech"—and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson notably coined the term "cyberspace" for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story "Burning Chrome" , and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer . These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s.

After expanding on the story in Neuromancer with two more novels, thus completing the dystopic Sprawl trilogy, Gibson collaborated with Bruce Sterling on the alternate history novel The Difference Engine , which became an important work of the science fiction subgenre known as steampunk. In the 1990s, Gibson composed the Bridge trilogy of novels, which explored the sociological developments of near-future urban environments, postindustrial society, and late capitalism. Following the turn of the century and the events of 9/11, Gibson emerged with a string of increasingly realist novels—Pattern Recognition , Spook Country , and Zero History —set in a roughly contemporary world. These works saw his name reach mainstream bestseller lists for the first time. His most recent novels, The Peripheral and Agency , returned to a more overt engagement with technology and recognizable science fiction themes.

In 1999, The Guardian described Gibson as "probably the most important novelist of the past two decades," while the Sydney Morning Herald called him the "noir prophet" of cyberpunk. Throughout his career, Gibson has written more than 20 short stories and 10 critically acclaimed novels , contributed articles to several major publications, and collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers, and musicians. His work has been cited as influencing a variety of disciplines: academia, design, film, literature, music, cyberculture, and technology. Wikipedia  

✵ 17. March 1948   •   Other names উইলিয়াম গিবসন
William Gibson photo
William Gibson: 117   quotes 5   likes

William Gibson Quotes

“It will bring about the extinction of the nation-state as we know it… I think it will be as big a deal as the creation of cities.”

William Gibson

Referring to the Internet
No Maps for These Territories (2000)

Thinking

“The cutting of Sense/Net's ice took a total of nine days. "I said a week," Armitage said, unable to conceal his satisfaction when Case showed him his plan for the run. "You took your own good time." "Balls," Case said, smiling at the screen. "That's good work, Armitage." "Yes," Armitage admitted, "but don't let it go to your head. Compared to what you'll eventually be up against, this is an arcade toy."”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Neuromancer (1984)

Smile , Sense , Time

“So it's entirely fair to say, and I've said it before, that the way Neuromancer-the-novel "looks" was influenced in large part by some of the artwork I saw in 'Heavy Metal'. I assume that this must also be true of John Carpenter's 'Escape from New York', Ridley Scott's 'Blade Runner'", and all other artefacts of the style sometimes dubbed 'cyberpunk.'”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Those French guys, they got their end in early.
William Gibson http://brmovie.com/FAQs/BR_FAQ_BR_Influence.htm
Neuromancer (1984), About Neuromancer

Way , Guy , Parting

“Honey,” Jammer said, “you'll learn. Some things you teach yourself to remember to forget.”

William Gibson book Count Zero

Spoken to Jackie, Ch. 28
Count Zero (1986)

Learning , Forgetting

“The past is past, the future unformed. There is only the moment, and that is where he prefers to be.”

William Gibson book All Tomorrow's Parties

Source: All Tomorrow's Parties‎ (2003), Ch. 4 : Formal Absences of Precious Things, p. 21

Past , Future

“Organized religion, he saw, back in the day, had been purely a signal-to-noise proposition, at once the medium and the message, a one-channel universe. For Europe, that channel was Christian, and broadcasting from Rome, but nothing could be broadcast faster than a man could travel on horseback. There was a hierarchy in place, and a highly organized methodology of top-down signal dissemination, but the time lag enforced by tech-lack imposed a near-disastrous ratio, the noise of heresy constantly threatening to overwhelm the signal.”

William Gibson book Spook Country

Source: Spook Country‎ (2007), Ch. 23, Two Moors, p. 117

Religion , Travel , Universe , Time

“This perpetual toggling between nothing being new, under the sun, and everything having very recently changed, absolutely, is perhaps the central driving tension of my work.”

William Gibson

At the Booksmith http://litseen.com/?p=7466, reading from Distrust That Particular Flavor. (19 January 2012).

Change , Sun

“It had much more to do with my wanting to be with hippy girls and have lots of hashish than it did with my sympathy for the plight of the North Vietnamese people under US imperialism. Much more, much more to do with hippy girls and hashish.”

William Gibson

On dodging the draft and moving to Toronto
No Maps for These Territories (2000)

People , Girl

“Viewing them induced a mild but not unpleasant vertigo, one of the rare times she was able to directly grasp the fact of her fame.”

William Gibson book Mona Lisa Overdrive

Source: Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Ch. 12

Time

“"Dix," Case said, "I wanna have a look at an AI in Berne. Can you think of any reason not to?"
"Not unless you got a morbid fear of death, no."”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Neuromancer (1984)

Death , Fear , Thinking

“Loss is not without its curious advantages for the artist. Major traumatic breaks are pretty common in the biographies of artists I respect.”

William Gibson

Interview in The New York Times Magazine (19 August 2007)

Loss

“As broker, I'm usually very careful as to sources.”
“You buy only from those who steal the best. Got it.”

William Gibson book Johnny Mnemonic

Source: Johnny Mnemonic (1981), p. 91

“When did you ever go to a drug dealer, and the drug dealer said, "you know, you should come back tomorrow, this is not very pure."”

William Gibson

It doesn't happen.
Source: No Maps for These Territories (2000)

“Hate," Case said. "Who do I hate? You tell me." "Who do you love?”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

the Finn's voice asked.
Neuromancer (1984)

Love , Hate

“Your saving grace, Danielle, is that you make the rest of your kind look vaguely human.”

William Gibson book Mona Lisa Overdrive

Source: Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Ch. 25

“Found this picture of Angie laughing in a restaurant with some other people, everybody pretty but beyond that it was like they had this glow, not really in the photograph but it was there anyway, something you feel. Look, she said to Lanette, showing her the picture, they got this glow.
It’s called money, Lanette said.”

William Gibson book Mona Lisa Overdrive

Source: Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Ch. 19

Money , People , Feeling

“The Gothick girl regarded Bobby with mild interest but no flash of human recognition whatever, as though she were seeing an ad for a product she’d heard of but had no intention of buying.”

William Gibson book Count Zero

Source: Count Zero (1986), Ch. 6

Girl

“Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway.”

William Gibson book Count Zero

On Turner, in Ch. 1
Count Zero (1986)

“All any drug amounts to is tweaking the incoming data. You have to be incredibly self-centered or pathetic to be satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data.”

William Gibson

No Maps for These Territories (2000)

“Have you ever considered the relationship of clinical paranoia to the phenomenon of religious conversion?”

William Gibson book Mona Lisa Overdrive

Source: Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Ch. 13

“They'd left the place littered with the abstract white forms of the foam packing units, with crumpled plastic film and hundreds of tiny foam beads. The Ono-Sendai; next year's most expensive Hosaka computer; a Sony monitor; a dozen disks of corporate-grade ice; a Braun coffee maker.”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Neuromancer (1984)

Coffee

“As I luxuriate in the discovery that I am no special sponge for sorrow, but merely another fallible animal in this stone maze of a city, I come simultaneously to see that I am the focus of some vast device fueled by an obscure desire.”

William Gibson book Count Zero

On Marly Krushkhova
Count Zero (1986)

Animals

“We no longer grow the full beef of bohemia, It's all veal now.”

William Gibson

Intelligence Squared on 'Zero History' with Cory Doctorow https://soundcloud.com/intelligence2/william-gibson-on-zero-history (5th October 2010)

“He’d grown up in white Jersey stringtowns where nobody knew shit about anything and hated anybody who did.”

William Gibson book Mona Lisa Overdrive

Source: Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Ch. 2

Hate

“The stick-on holograms had actually had some effect on Bobby, because religion was now something he felt he’d considered and put aside. Basically, the way he figured it, there were just some people around who needed that shit, and he guessed there always had been, but he wasn’t one of them, so he didn’t.”

William Gibson book Count Zero

Source: Count Zero (1986), Ch. 6

Way , Religion , People

“As new technologies search out and lace over every interstice in the net of global communication, we find ourselves with increasingly less excuse for…slack. And that, I would argue, is what the World Wide Web, the test pattern for whatever will become the dominant global medium, offers us. Today, in its clumsy, larval, curiously innocent way, it offers us the opportunity to waste time…It will probably evolve into something considerably less random, and less fun — we seem to have a knack for that — but in the meantime, in its gloriously unsorted Global Ham Television Postcard Universes phase, surfing the Web is a procrastinator’s dream. And people who see you doing it might even imagine you’re working.”

William Gibson book Distrust That Particular Flavor

"The Net Is a Waste of Time," The New York Times Magazine, July 14, 1996.
Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012)

Imagination , Time , Search , Dreams

“In the age of wooden television in the South where I grew up, leisure involved sitting on screened porches, smoking cigarettes, drinking iced tea, engaging in conversation, and staring into space. It might also involve fishing. Sometimes the Web does remind me of fishing.”

William Gibson book Distrust That Particular Flavor

"The Net Is a Waste of Time," The New York Times Magazine, July 14, 1996.
Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012)

Fish , Drink , Age , Tea

“I was born in 1948. I can’t recall a world before television…Initially there was nothing on it but “snow,” and then the nightly advent of a targetlike device called “the test pattern,” which people actually gathered to watch.
I imagine that the World Wide Web and its modest wonders are no more than the test pattern for whatever the twenty-first century will regard as its equivalent medium.”

William Gibson book Distrust That Particular Flavor

"The Net Is a Waste of Time," The New York Times Magazine, July 14, 1996.
Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012)

World , Imagination , People

“My first impulse, when presented with any spanking-new piece of computer hardware, is to imagine how it will look in ten years’ time, gathering dust under a card table in a thrift shop. And it probably will.”

William Gibson book Distrust That Particular Flavor

"My Obsession," Wired, issue 7.01. 1999.
Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012)

Imagination , Time

“For more than three decades the Americans had been gradually sliding into isolationism and industrial decline. Space, he thought ruefully, they should have gone into space. He'd never understood the strange paralysis of will that had seemed to grip their brilliant early efforts. Or perhaps it was simply a failure of imagination, of vision.”

William Gibson Burning Chrome

"Red Star, Winter Orbit"
Burning Chrome (short story anthology, 1986)

Imagination , Failure , Effort

“Vasopressin makes you remember, I mean really remember. Clinically they use the stuff to counter senile amnesia, but the street finds its own uses for things.”

William Gibson Burning Chrome

Burning Chrome (short story anthology, 1986)
Source: "Burning Chrome" (The Burning Chrome anthology was named after this short story, originally published in Omni, 1982)

“The world hadn't ever had so many moving parts or so few labels.”

William Gibson Sprawl trilogy

Source: Sprawl trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Chapter 39, "Too Much"

World , Parting

“In cyberspace there are no shadows.”

William Gibson Sprawl trilogy

Source: Sprawl trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Chapter 37, "Cranes"

“I'm going to level with you. I'm away for a while. But there's no cash on the premises, no drugs, and the pit bull's tested positive. Twice.”

William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy

She doesn't leave a message.
Source: Blue Ant trilogy, Pattern Recognition (2003), Chapter 36, "The Dig" (Parkaboy's outgoing message)

“Life is more difficult for the serious artist. Time is money, but also money is money.”

William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy

Source: Blue Ant trilogy, Pattern Recognition (2003), Chapter 26, "SIGINT"

Money , Time , Life

“You care passionately about this thing…That is what makes you so valuable. That and your talents, your allergies, your tame pathologies, the things that make you a secret legend in the world of marketing.”

William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy

Source: Blue Ant trilogy, Pattern Recognition (2003), Chapter 7, "The Proposition" (Bigend to Cayce, about the footage)

World , Secret , Passion

“There is that mirror−world ingestion of archaic substances, she thinks: People smoke, and drink as though it were good for you, and seem to still be in some sort of honeymoon phase with cocaine.”

William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy

Source: Blue Ant trilogy, Pattern Recognition (2003), Chapter 1, "The Website of Dreadful Night"

Drink , People , World , Thinking

“I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling.”

William Gibson Jackpot trilogy

Jackpot trilogy, The Peripheral (2014)
Source: Epigraph, taken from H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, chapter 11.

Time , Travel

“I wish I had a book.”

William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy

There were a few expensively bound and weirdly neutered bookazines here, but he knew from glancing through them that these were bland advertisements for being wealthy, wealthy and deeply, witheringly unimaginative.
Reading, his therapist had suggested, had likely been his first drug.
Source: Blue Ant trilogy, Zero History (2010), Chapter 18, "140" (Milgrim in London)

Books

“Mirror-world. The plugs on appliances are huge, triple−pronged, for a species of current that only powers electric chairs, in America. Cars are reversed, left to right, inside; telephone handsets have a different weight, a different balance; the covers of paperbacks look like Australian money.”

William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy

Source: Blue Ant trilogy, Pattern Recognition (2003), Chapter 1, "The Website of Dreadful Night"

Money , World , Cars

“Security wants to know you're a player. Otherwise, you'd steal. Boomzilla understands that.”

William Gibson Bridge trilogy

Source: Bridge trilogy, All Tomorrow's Parties‎ (1999), Chapter 37, "A Little Shit Money"

Understanding

“There was a looseness to this, beyond her experience of chatbots, but a wariness as well.”

William Gibson Jackpot trilogy

Source: Jackpot trilogy, Agency (2020), Chapter 3, "App Whisperer" (Verity reflecting on Eunice's conversational style)

“If I was looking to be depressed, I’d come to the right place.”

William Gibson book The Winter Market

"The Winter Market"
Burning Chrome (short story anthology, 1986)

“There was coffee. Life would go on.”

William Gibson book The Winter Market

"The Winter Market"
Burning Chrome (short story anthology, 1986)

Coffee , Life