Ernest Cline

“My father looked as if I'd just gutted him - but it was mingled with a twisted sense of satisfaction. It felt good to hurt his feelings.”

“'Star Wars' was the mythology of my youth. I longed for adventure.”

“What happens when you die? Well, we're not completely sure. But the evidence seems to suggest that nothing happens. You're just dead, your brain stops working, and then you're not around to ask annoying questions anymore. Those stories you heard? About going to a wonderful place called 'heaven' where there is no pain or death and you live forever in a state of perpetual happiness? Also total bullshit. Just like all that God stuff. There's no evidence of a heaven and there never was. We made that up too. Wishful thinking. So now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you're going to die someday and disappear forever.Sorry.”

“Once the people of planet Earth are all hanging out together online in a virtual world without any borders, I think it could change social networking, entertainment and even politics.”

“Maybe they seeded life on Earth millions of years ago, and now they're here to punish us for turning out to be such a lame species and inventing reality TV and shit?”

“I love stories like 'The Terminator' movies and 'The Matrix,' where our machines become self-aware and turn on us.”

“I've wanted to own a DeLorean since I was 10 years old, but it always seemed like a silly daydream. Like owning the 'A-Team' van or something.”

“Whenever I watch 'The Matrix,' I think that it is possible, but I don't think that it's going to be machines enslaving humans.”

“It suddenly occurred to me just how absurd this scene was: a guy wearing a suit of armor, standing next to an undead king, both hunched over the controls of a classic arcade game. It was the sort of surreal image you'd expect to see on the cover of an old issue of Heavy Metal or Dragon magazine.”

“I think it's a bit silly to brand the Internet as the 'downfall of youth.'”

“I wish someone had just told me the truth right up front, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. I wish someone had just said: “Here’s the deal, Wade. You’re something called a ‘human being.’ That’s a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we’re descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you’ll learn more about it But trust me, that’s really how we all got here. There’s proof of it everywhere, buried in the rocks. That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. 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. “Oh, and by the way … there’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid Deal with it.”

“I have such a vivid memory of seeing science fiction movies and going to the lobby and playing whatever the space games were, and imagine I was blowing up the Death Star.”

“I was just starting out, trying to become a screenwriter, and I became the Austin slam champion three times. For a nerdy, kind of a socially awkward guy, that did wonders for my self esteem.”

“I was 7 years old when the '80s began and 17 years old when they ended, so it was an incredibly formative decade for me.”

“You could shove it up your ass and pretend you're a corn dog."COURTESY VIOLATION-RESPONSE MUTED-VIOLATION LOGGED”

“I'm incredibly nostalgic for the '80s, because I think that's when Geek Culture really kicked in to high gear.”

“I feel like I was hit by all of geek culture at once while I was growing up in the '70s and '80s. Saturday morning cartoons like 'Star Blazers' and 'Robotech.' Live action Japanese shows like 'Ultraman' and 'The Space Giants.'”

“It's weird that, in a way, by writing about video games, I get to develop them, too.”

“I have to avoid things like 'World of Warcraft' or 'Minecraft', otherwise I'd never get any work done.”

“Before I became a full-time writer, I worked in tech support in those giant cubicle farms you see. I was surrounded by people who played video games all the time - sometimes actually in the call centers, playing online multiplayer games. I saw friends of mine who began to feel that going online was more compelling to them than real life.”