Book

Ready Player One: A Novel

The worldwide bestseller—now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OAS

(39 total)

Characters

Ernest Cline (39)

“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.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: We All Die, The Truth About Life

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

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Escaping Reality, Video Games, Playing Games To Escape Reality, Virtual Reality

“Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. 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.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Perspective, The Cosmos And Perspective, Looking At The Sun And Feeling Small, Pale Blue Dot

“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…”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Reality, Virtual Reality, In Order To Be Happy You Have To Face The Real World

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

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: You Don't Always Get What You Want, The Beauty In Not Getting What You Want, Not Getting What You Want, The World Isn't Perfect

“I never knew how to act or what to say, and when I did work up the courage to speak, I always seemed to say the wrong thing.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Communication, Mistakes, embarrassed

“I couldn’t bear the idea that the girl with whom I was virtually smitten might actually be some middle-aged dude named Chuck, with back hair and male-pattern baldness.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: catfishing, Love, Online

“We sat there awhile, holding hands, reveling in the strange new sensation of actually touching one another.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: human contact, touching, Holding Hands

“We spread across the entire planet like an unstoppable virus.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: humanity, humans, virus

“The farther I went, the more confident I became.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Confidence, Moving Forward, Success

“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…”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Video Games, Escapism, Depression

“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.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: cereal, civilization, decline

“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.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: arcade, Children, helpless

“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.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Honesty, Lies, Pain, Poverty

“You have to live the rest of your life knowing you're going to die someday and disappear forever.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Life, Death, Gone

“We talked for hours. Long, rambling conversations about everything under the sun. Spending time with her was intoxicating. We seemed to have everything in common. We shared the same interests. We were driven by the same goal. She got all of my jokes. She made me laugh. She made me think. She changed…”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Love, Friendship, Relationships

“In a way, these old role-playing games had been the first virtual-reality simulations, created long before computers were powerful enough to do the job. In those days, if you wanted to escape to another world, you had to create it yourself, using your brain, some paper, pencils, dice, and a few rule…”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: role playing, Games, Technology

“I was in love with her. I could feel it, deep in the soft, chewy caramel center of my being.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Love, Dating, Relationships

“I never wanted to return to the real world. Because the real world sucked.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Reality, Life, Escapism

“No matter where you go, there you are.”

— Ernest Cline, amazon.com

Tagged: Life, travel, destination