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William Gibson

William Gibson Quotes

Novelist

William Gibson, born on March 17, 1948, is a renowned science fiction novelist from Canada. His works are known for their unique futurist style and profound insights into technological development, making him a representative figure in the cyberpunk literary genre.

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All People Thinking Cyberpunk Ifs Writing Way Fiction Science Fiction Knows Technology

Famous William Gibson Quotes

“When I began to write fiction that I knew would be published as science fiction, [and] part of what I brought to it was the critical knowledge that science fiction was always about the period in which it was written.”

Writing Would Be Fiction Written Periods Science Fiction Critical

Author:William Gibson

“I took Punk to be the detonation of some slow-fused projectile buried deep in society's flank a decade earlier, and I took it to be, somehow, a sign.”

Decades Buried Punk Cyberpunk Projectile

Book:Distrust That Particular Flavor

Source: Distrust That Particular Flavor

“She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”

Knows Soul Moving Lost Left White Behinds Feet Theory Hearing London Noise Mortals Planes League Left Behind Jet Arrivals Luggage Lag White Noise Jet Lag

Book:Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

“There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul.”

Soul Impossible Events Source Horizon Derivatives Event Horizon

Book:Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

“His teeth sang in their individual sockets like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol.”

Individual Perfect Clear Teeth Forks Tuning Ethanol Pitch Perfect

Book:Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer

“We monitor many frequencies. We listen always. Came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. It played us a mighty dub.”

Voice Tongue Frequency Babel

Book:Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer

“You needed a new pancreas. The one we bought for you frees you from a dangerous dependency.” “Thanks, but I was enjoying that dependency.”

Enjoy Dangerous Needed Thanks Dependency Pancreas

Book:Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer

“Fiction is an illusion wrought with many small, conventionally symbolic marks, triggering visions in the minds of others”

Mind Fiction Vision Illusion Mark Symbolic

Author:William Gibson

“Lost, so small amid that dark, hands grown cold, body image fading down corridors of television sky.”

Body Hands Lost Dark Sky Television Cold Body Image Fading Corridors

Book:Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer

“Canadian cities looked the way American cities did on television.”

Way Cities Television Urban Planning American Cities

Book:Spook Country

Source: Spook Country

“Somewhere, deep within her, surfaces a tiny clockwork submarine. There are times when you can only take the next step. And then another.”

Next Steps Surface Tiny Next Steps Deep Within Clockwork Submarines

Book:Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

“Things aren't different. Things are things.”

Life Different Different Things

Book:Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer

“The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.”

Trying Fiction Make Sense Looking Back

Book:Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

“Some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places that had once belonged to cigarettes now belonged to phones.”

Language Phones Cigarette

Book:Zero History

Source: Zero History

“The past is past, the future unformed. There is only the moment, and that is where he prefers to be.”

Moments Past Time

Book:All Tomorrow's Parties

Source: All Tomorrow's Parties

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

“The future is already upon us, it is just unevenly distributed.”

Author:William Gibson

“You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work.”

Writing Natural Overcoming Appropriate Revulsion

Author:William Gibson

“The prefix cyber is going the way of the prefix electro.”

Author:William Gibson

“We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.”

Natural Forget Strange Flow Species Constructs Artifacts

Book:Distrust That Particular Flavor

Source: Distrust That Particular Flavor

“It doesn't matter how fast your modem is if you're being shelled by ethnic separatists.”

Ifs Matter Statistics

Author:William Gibson

“If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.”

People Ifs Thinking World Enough Would Be Ignorance

Author:William Gibson

“The future's here already. It's just unevenly distributed.”

Author:William Gibson

“Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description.”

Writing Important Dream Jobs Description Bad Dream Good Dream

Author:William Gibson

“Upon arriving in the capital-F Future, we discover it, invariably, to be the lower-case now.”

Book:Distrust That Particular Flavor

Source: Distrust That Particular Flavor

“"Cyberspace is everting." It's interpenetrating our everyday reality to the point that on-line is our normal waking state.”

States Reality Lines Normal Entrepreneur Everyday Waking Cyberspace

Author:William Gibson

“Our hardware is likely to turn into something like us a lot faster than we are likely to turn into something like our hardware...I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't.”

Turns Doubt Computer Faster Distinction Grandchildren Hardware

Author:William Gibson

“The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.”

Ifs Writing Humans Might Lying Difficult Imagination Common Novel Active Vanity Novelists Programming Length Deceiving

Author:William Gibson

“Enlightenment is "being," and it grows; it's end is serenity.”

Ends Grows Enlightenment Serenity

Book:A season in heaven: being the log of an expedition after that legendary beast, cosmic consciousness

Source: A season in heaven: being the log of an expedition after that legendary beast, cosmic consciousness

About the Author

Born: March 17, 1948
Known for: Novelist
Quotes: 279

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