Quotes by Ernest Cline

I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing 80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasnt part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.

In the far reaches of the world, under a lost and lonely hill, lies the TOMB OF HORRORS. This labyrinthine crypt is filled with terrible traps, strange and ferocious monsters, rich and magical treasures, and somewhere within rests the evil DemiLich.

My father looked as if I’d just gutted him, and I felt a pang of regret—but it was mingled with a twisted sense of satisfaction. It felt good to hurt his feelings—it was payback for the way his choices had irrevocably damaged my own.

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

We told each other what movies we were currently watching and what books we were reading.

“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.”

“Youre probably wondering whats going to happen to you. Thats easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. Youre going to die. We all die. Thats just how it is.”