Ernest Cline Quotes

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Ernest Cline

Profession : Novelist

Birth : March 29, 1972

I was standing on the shoulders of other science fiction writers like William Gibson, who had written 'Neuromancer' on a typewriter before home computers even really existed, and Neal Stephenson who wrote 'Snow Crash' in the early '90s and imagined an online virtual world before the birth of the modern Internet.

Ernest Cline

'Fanboys' was the first real screenplay that I ever wrote that was an original story with my own characters.

Ernest Cline

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

Ernest Cline

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.

Ernest Cline

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

Ernest Cline

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

Ernest Cline

My favorite video game of all time is called 'Black Tiger'. It's a Capcom Dungeons and Dragons game from 1987. I have the actual arcade version sitting in my office.

Ernest Cline

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.

Ernest Cline

I've never really collected anything other than old Atari cartridges. I only had, like, 12 Atari games as a kid, so at some point in my 20s I decided I was going to own all of them.

Ernest Cline

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.'

Ernest Cline

I spent most of my childhood welded to my Atari 2600, until I got my first computer, a TRS-80.

Ernest Cline

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.

Ernest Cline

I noticed in the late 1990s that my friends and I were already nostalgic for the 1980s, and by the turn of the century, VH1's 'I Love the '80s' gave all of us an accelerated nostalgia for our generation.

Ernest Cline

I notice when I'm at a party where I don't know anybody - even if I have nothing in common with somebody - we can still talk because we were raised by the same TV and cartoons and movies.

Ernest Cline

I don't know if the '80s were unique, but we certainly got original, groundbreaking stuff at the time with movies like 'Back to the Future' and 'Star Wars' - movies that became classics.

Ernest Cline

Personally, I'm kind of swirling in this hurricane of virtual reality because of 'Ready Player One.'

Ernest Cline

For the whole history of cinema, we've been experiencing movies and television through a two-dimensional, letterboxed window. But once you can start programming entertainment for all the different senses, it becomes a wholly different medium.

Ernest Cline

Gibson wrote 'Neuromancer' on a typewriter, you know, before the technology he was writing about existed.

Ernest Cline

Now, a lot of early VR worlds or universes that are coming online take inspiration from 'Ready Player One.' It's just the coolest thing ever.

Ernest Cline

I was always obsessed with the 'Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai,' this weird little cult movie. There was this promised sequel before the end credits - 'Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League' - and I knew instinctively they were never going to make that movie, because the first one had made, like, $8 at the box office.

Ernest Cline