"Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest."
"No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful."
"Being human totally sucks most of the time. Video games are the only thing that make life bearable."
"Dozens of books, cartoons, movies, and miniseries have attempted to tell the story of everything that happened next, but every single one of them got it wrong. So I want to set the record straight, one and for all."
"Ok, on second thought, maybe honesty isn't the best policy after all. Maybe it isn't a good idea to tell a newly arrived human being that he's been born into a world of chaos, pain, and poverty just in time to watch everything fall to pieces."
"People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up."
"You'd be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever."
"Going outside is highly overrated."
"You’re evil, you know that?” I said.
She grinned and shook her head. “Chaotic Neutral, sugar."
"Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at astar. 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."
"I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life, right up until I knew it was ending. 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. Do you understand?"
"Yes," I Said. "I think I do.""Good" he said, giving me a wink. "Don't make the same mistake I did. Don't hide in here forever."
"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."
"One person can keep a secret, but not two."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"A river of words flowed between us."
"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."
"I would argue that masturbation is the human animal's most important adaptation. The very cornerstone of our technological civilization. Our hands evolved to grip tools, all right—including our own. You see, thinkers, inventors, and scientists are usually geeks, and geeks have a harder time getting laid than anyone. Without the built-in sexual release valve provided by masturbation, it's doubtful that early humans would have ever mastered the secrets of fire or discovered the wheel. And you can bet that Galileo, Newton, and Einstein never would have made their discoveries if they hadn't first been able to clear their heads by slapping the salami (or "knocking a few protons off the old hydrogen atom"). The same goes for Marie Curie. Before she discovered radium, you can be certain she first discovered the little man in the canoe."
"Continue your quest by taking the test
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?"
"Virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation."
"Very well!” he said. “You shall prove your worth by facing me in a joust!” I’d never heard of an undead lich king challenging someone to a joust. Especially not in a subterranean burial chamber.
“All right,” I said uncertainly. “But won’t we be needing horses for that?”
“Not horses,” he replied, stepping away from his throne. “Birds."
"Dilettantes,’ Art3mis said. ‘It’s their own fault for not knowing all the Schoolhouse Rock! lyrics by heart."
"I was watching a collection of vintage '80s cereal commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes."
"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."
"She grinned. "Don't you want to build a huge interstellar spaceship, load it full of videogames, junk food, and comfy couches, and then get the hell out of here?" "I'm up for that, too," I said. "if it means I get to spend the rest of my life with you."
"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: hot."
"You could shove it up your ass and pretend you're a corn dog."
COURTESY VIOLATION-RESPONSE MUTED-VIOLATION LOGGED"
"For one quarter, Black Tiger lets me escape from my rotten existence for three glorious hours. Pretty good deal."
"Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom."
"I was obsessed. I wouldn't quit. My grades suffered. I didn't care."
"The clans began to bombard the outer force field with rockets, missiles, nukes, and harsh language."
"It is on!" Aech shouted into his comlink. "it is on like Red Dawn!
"If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It's just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible."
"Parzival 110,000 highscore
"I have a thing for evil bald bad guys. The Kurgan is too sexy."
"We lived in the Portland Avenue Stacks, a sprawling hive of discolored tin shoeboxes rusting on the shores of I-40, just west of Oklahoma City’s decaying skyscraper core."
"All the intervening layers slipped away, and I lost myself in the game within the game."
"For a bunch of hairless apes, we've actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things."
"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."
"So now the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the weather is all messed up. Plants and animals are dying off in record numbers, and lots of people are starving and homeless. And we’re still
fighting wars with each other, mostly over the few resources we have left."
"Screw you, Aech! And your dead grandma!"
"At the end of the day, I was still a virgin, all alone in a dark room, humping a lubed-up robot."
"The Firefly universe was anchored in a sector adjacent to the Star Wars galaxy, with a detailed re-creation of the Star Trek universe in the sector adjacent to that."
"I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal. —Groucho Marx"
"Anyone smart enough to accomplish what they have should know better than to risk everything by talking to the vultures in the media."
"Halliday was the video game designer responsible for creating the OASIS, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis."
"OASIS was much more than a game or an entertainment platform."
"Anonymity was one of the major perks of the OASIS. "
"I was a painfully shy, awkward kid, with low self-esteem and almost no social skills."
"I couldn't bear the idea that Art3mis might actually be some middle-aged dude named Chuck with back hair and male-pattern baldness."
"My avatar had a slightly smaller nose than me, and he was taller. And thinner. And more muscular. And he didn't have any teenage acne. But aside from these minor details, we looked more or less identical."
"Now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you're going to die someday and disappear forever."
"A lich was an undead creature, usually an incredibly powerful wizard or king who had employed dark magic to bind his intellect to his own reanimated corpse, thus achieving a perverted form of immortality."
"There was no such thing as a backup avatar. OASIS users could have only one avatar at a time."
"I knew the crush I had on Art3mis was both silly and ill-advised. What did I really know about her? She'd never revealed her true identity, of course. Or her age or location in the real world."
"No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful."
"Being human totally sucks most of the time. Video games are the only thing that make life bearable."
"Dozens of books, cartoons, movies, and miniseries have attempted to tell the story of everything that happened next, but every single one of them got it wrong. So I want to set the record straight, one and for all.""Ok, on second thought, maybe honesty isn't the best policy after all. Maybe it isn't a good idea to tell a newly arrived human being that he's been born into a world of chaos, pain, and poverty just in time to watch everything fall to pieces."
"People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up."
"You'd be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever."
"Going outside is highly overrated."
"You’re evil, you know that?” I said.
She grinned and shook her head. “Chaotic Neutral, sugar."
"Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at astar. 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."
"I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life, right up until I knew it was ending. 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. Do you understand?""Yes," I Said. "I think I do.""Good" he said, giving me a wink. "Don't make the same mistake I did. Don't hide in here forever."
"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."
"One person can keep a secret, but not two."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"A river of words flowed between us."
"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."
"I would argue that masturbation is the human animal's most important adaptation. The very cornerstone of our technological civilization. Our hands evolved to grip tools, all right—including our own. You see, thinkers, inventors, and scientists are usually geeks, and geeks have a harder time getting laid than anyone. Without the built-in sexual release valve provided by masturbation, it's doubtful that early humans would have ever mastered the secrets of fire or discovered the wheel. And you can bet that Galileo, Newton, and Einstein never would have made their discoveries if they hadn't first been able to clear their heads by slapping the salami (or "knocking a few protons off the old hydrogen atom"). The same goes for Marie Curie. Before she discovered radium, you can be certain she first discovered the little man in the canoe."
"Continue your quest by taking the test
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?"
"Virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation."
“All right,” I said uncertainly. “But won’t we be needing horses for that?”
“Not horses,” he replied, stepping away from his throne. “Birds."
"Dilettantes,’ Art3mis said. ‘It’s their own fault for not knowing all the Schoolhouse Rock! lyrics by heart."
"I was watching a collection of vintage '80s cereal commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes."
"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."
"She grinned. "Don't you want to build a huge interstellar spaceship, load it full of videogames, junk food, and comfy couches, and then get the hell out of here?" "I'm up for that, too," I said. "if it means I get to spend the rest of my life with you."
"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: hot."
"You could shove it up your ass and pretend you're a corn dog."
COURTESY VIOLATION-RESPONSE MUTED-VIOLATION LOGGED"
"For one quarter, Black Tiger lets me escape from my rotten existence for three glorious hours. Pretty good deal."
"Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom."
"I was obsessed. I wouldn't quit. My grades suffered. I didn't care."
"The clans began to bombard the outer force field with rockets, missiles, nukes, and harsh language."
"It is on!" Aech shouted into his comlink. "it is on like Red Dawn!
"If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It's just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible."
"Parzival 110,000 highscore"I have a thing for evil bald bad guys. The Kurgan is too sexy."
"We lived in the Portland Avenue Stacks, a sprawling hive of discolored tin shoeboxes rusting on the shores of I-40, just west of Oklahoma City’s decaying skyscraper core."
"All the intervening layers slipped away, and I lost myself in the game within the game."
"For a bunch of hairless apes, we've actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things."
"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."
"So now the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the weather is all messed up. Plants and animals are dying off in record numbers, and lots of people are starving and homeless. And we’re still
fighting wars with each other, mostly over the few resources we have left."
"Screw you, Aech! And your dead grandma!"
"At the end of the day, I was still a virgin, all alone in a dark room, humping a lubed-up robot."
"The Firefly universe was anchored in a sector adjacent to the Star Wars galaxy, with a detailed re-creation of the Star Trek universe in the sector adjacent to that."
"I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal. —Groucho Marx"
"Anyone smart enough to accomplish what they have should know better than to risk everything by talking to the vultures in the media."
"Halliday was the video game designer responsible for creating the OASIS, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis.""OASIS was much more than a game or an entertainment platform."
"Anonymity was one of the major perks of the OASIS. "
"I was a painfully shy, awkward kid, with low self-esteem and almost no social skills."
"I couldn't bear the idea that Art3mis might actually be some middle-aged dude named Chuck with back hair and male-pattern baldness."
"My avatar had a slightly smaller nose than me, and he was taller. And thinner. And more muscular. And he didn't have any teenage acne. But aside from these minor details, we looked more or less identical."
"Now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you're going to die someday and disappear forever."
"A lich was an undead creature, usually an incredibly powerful wizard or king who had employed dark magic to bind his intellect to his own reanimated corpse, thus achieving a perverted form of immortality."
"There was no such thing as a backup avatar. OASIS users could have only one avatar at a time."
"I knew the crush I had on Art3mis was both silly and ill-advised. What did I really know about her? She'd never revealed her true identity, of course. Or her age or location in the real world."
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