Ernest Cline citations

“One person can keep a secret, but not two.”

“No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful.”

“You'd be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever.”

“Being human totally sucks most of the time. Videogames are the only thing that make life bearable.”

“Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a. One of over a hundred billion in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.”

“You’re evil, you know that?” I said.
She grinned and shook her head. “Chaotic Neutral, sugar.”

“You're probably wondering what's going to happen to you. That's easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You're going to die. We all die. That's just how it is.”

“You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out.”

“I felt like a kid standing in the world's greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.”

“I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing '80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn't part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.”

“For a bunch of hairless apes, we've actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things.”

“I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.”

“A river of words flowed between us.”

“Virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation.”

“I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: GAME OVER.”

“Yes, but what test? What test was I supposed to take? The Kobayashi Maru? The Pepsi Challenge? Could the clue have been any more vague?”

“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:.”

“That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.”

“Dilettantes,’ Art3mis said. ‘It’s their own fault for not knowing all thelyrics by heart.”

“The Facts were right there waiting for me, hidden in old books written by people who weren't afraid to be honest”

“So I'm supposed to believe you're one of those mythical guys who only cares about a woman's personality, and not about the package it comes in?”

“I’d spent my entire life overdosing on uncut escapism, willingly allowing fantasy to become my reality.”

“Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom.”

“The clans began to bombard the outer force field with rockets, missiles, nukes, and harsh language.”

“I never ran out of ammo, because each time I fired a round, a new round was teleported into the bottom of the clip. My bullet bill this month was going to be huge.”

“I know that the future is scary at times. But there's just no escaping it.”

“You cannot escape your destiny”