William Gibson: Making

William Gibson is American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre. Explore interesting quotes on making.

William Gibson: 234 quotes5 likes

“The future is there," Cayce hears herself say, "looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now.”

William Gibson book Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

“The future is there… looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.”

William Gibson book Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

William Gibson

Misattributed <br class="br">Source: thought to be Gibson's words as a result of Twitter attribution decay, despite repeated disavowals. https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144940064990961664 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941061578559488 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941447936884736 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/171091202161131520. The source, according to Gibson, is Steven Winterburn https://twitter.com/greatdismal/status/119133581598666752 https://twitter.com/5tevenw/status/73091190475595776. However, Steven Winterburn is NOT the original creator of that quote. The original quote is the creation of Twitter account holder "@debihope" https://twitter.com/debihope?lang=en. See research by quoteinvestigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/10/25/diagnose/.

“One of the liberating effects of science fiction when I was a teenager was precisely its ability to tune me into all sorts of strange data and make me realize that I wasn’t as totally isolated in perceiving the world as being monstrous and crazy”

William Gibson

“To present a whole world that doesn’t exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we’re polymaths. That’s just the act of all good writing.”

William Gibson

“Another example — maybe a better one, in a way — was when it was confirmed that Michael Jackson was going to marry Elvis Presley's daughter. [loud, game-show buzzer noise] A good friend of mine in the States faxed me, and he simply … he said, "This makes your job more difficult." And I knew exactly, I knew exactly what he meant. 'Cos something … a scenario that seemed to belong to the universe of the late Terry Southern, was suddenly, suddenly real. It's that truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that's something peculiar to our time. I don't think our grandparents had to live with that.”

William Gibson

No Maps for These Territories (2000)

“It's a world where there aren't families. It's the world of a young person going out into the wilderness, cities, and sort of in a way creating a family. You know, it's kind of like… it's not that it's a "goth book," but it's kind of rather the same stuff that makes kids be goths.”

William Gibson

About Neuromancer
No Maps for These Territories (2000)

“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

“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)

“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)