Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Ready Player One:
“Going outside is highly overrated.”
“You'd be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever.”
“People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Being human totally sucks most of the time. Videogames are the only thing that make life bearable.”
“You’re evil, you know that?” I said. She grinned and shook her head. “Chaotic Neutral, sugar.”
“One person can keep a secret, but not two.”
“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.”
“You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out.”
“For a bunch of hairless apes, we've actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things.”
“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 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.”
“You could shove it up your ass and pretend you're a corn dog."COURTESY VIOLATION-RESPONSE MUTED-VIOLATION LOGGED”
“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.”
“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.”
“As we continued to talk, going through the motions of getting to know each other, I realized that we already did know each other, as well as any two people could. We’d known each other for years, in the most intimate way possible. We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a dear friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.”
“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.”
“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.”
“A river of words flowed between us.”
“The Facts were right there waiting for me,hidden in old books written by people who weren't afraid to be honest”
“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.”
“Virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation.”
“You know you've totally screwed up your life when your whole world turns to shit and the only person you have to talk to is your system agent software!”
“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.”
“Continue your quest by taking the testYes, but what test? What test was I supposed to take? The Kobayashi Maru? The Pepsi Challenge? Could the clue have been any more vague?”
“No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful.”
“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.”
“So I'm supposed to believe you're one of those mythical guys who only cares about a woman's personality, and not about the package it comes in?”
“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.”
