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William Gibson Quotes
born 1948 Canada
William Ford Gibson (born 17 March 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his short story "Burning Chrome" and later popularized the concept in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984).
Canada Critics Essayists Novelists Philosophers Also known as: Gibson, William, Gibson, William Ford, Burning Chrome (short story collection), Distrust That Particular Flavor
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46 quotes
The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.
The NET is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.
Shorts, she thinks, drawing abreast of this trio, are somehow always wrong in London.
Pattern Recognition (2003)
We no longer grow the full beef of bohemia, It's all veal now.
He wore an expensive-looking blue suit cut in Parisian business style, a white broadcloth shirt, and a very English-looking tie, probably from Charvet.
Count Zero (1986)
People find conspiracy theories fantastically comforting not because they’re more frightening than reality, but because they’re less frightening than reality.
This perpetual toggling between nothing being new, under the sun, and everything having very recently changed, absolutely, is perhaps the central driving tension of my work.
The past is past, the future unformed. There is only the moment, and that is where he prefers to be.
All Tomorrow's Parties (2003)
Time moves in one direction, memory in another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.
Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012)
Naps are essential to my process. Not dreams, but that state adjacent to sleep, the mind on waking.
There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is innately media-related.
Korolev stared at the man, who had the blundering, careless look of someone drunk on freedom since birth.
Burning Chrome (1986)
Vasopressin makes you remember, I mean really remember. Clinically they use the stuff to counter senile amnesia, but the street finds its own uses for things.
Burning Chrome (1986)
The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length. If not for our excessive vanity and our over-active imaginations, novelists might be unusually difficult to deceive.
Loss is not without its curious advantages for the artist. Major traumatic breaks are pretty common in the biographies of artists I respect.
“As broker, I'm usually very careful as to sources.” “You buy only from those who steal the best. Got it.”
Burning Chrome (1986)
If I was looking to be depressed, I’d come to the right place.
Burning Chrome (1986)
All any drug amounts to is tweaking the incoming data. You have to be incredibly self-centered or pathetic to be satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data.
No Maps for These Territories (2000)
Initially there was nothing on [television] but “snow,” and then the nightly advent of a targetlike device called “the test pattern,” which people actually gathered to watch.
She swam through the submarine half-life of bottles and glassware and the slow swirl of cigarette smoke...she moved through her natural element, one bar after another.
Burning Chrome (1986)
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