Cyberpunk Quotes

• The street finds its own uses for things.

  William Gibson

  Use, Streets

  William Gibson (2012). “Distrust That Particular Flavor”, p.14, Penguin

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• The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead station.

  William Gibson

  Color, Sky, Television

  Neuromancer ch. 1 (1984)

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

  William Gibson

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

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• Time moves in one direction, memory in another.

  William Gibson

  Time, Memories, Moving

  William Gibson (2012). “Distrust That Particular Flavor”, p.37, Penguin

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• When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.

  William Gibson

  Engineering, Design, Want

  William Gibson (2010). “Zero History”, p.183, Penguin

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• Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts.

  William Gibson

  Children, Technology, Cyberspace

  1984 Neuromancer. This is the first recorded use of the term 'cyberspace'.

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• 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.

  William Gibson

  Punk, Buried, Projectile

  William Gibson (2012). “Distrust That Particular Flavor”, p.22, Penguin

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• Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes. THAT is cyberpunk.

  Bruce Sterling

  Eye, Thinking, Going Away

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• It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information.

  William Gibson

  Moving, Technology, Leaving

  William Gibson (2014). “Burning Chrome”, p.17, Harper Collins

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• A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.

  William Gibson

  Light, Data, Cities

  1984 Neuromancer. This is the first recorded use of the term 'cyberspace'.

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• And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

  William Gibson

  Money, Eye, Blue

  William Gibson (1987). “Count Zero”, p.24, Penguin

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• The early cyberpunk idea was that networked computers would let us do our work at home, as freelancers, and then transact directly with peers over networks. Digital technology would create tremendous slack, allow us to apply its asynchronous, decentralized qualities to our own work and lives.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Home, Technology, Ideas

  "Living In The Present Is A Disorder". Interview with R.U. Sirius, www.wired.com. April 8, 2013.

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• The 'Net is a waste of time.

  William Gibson

  Technology, Waste, Wasting Time

  "The Net Is a Waste of Time". The New York Times Magazine column, www.nytimes.com. July 14, 1996.

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• I wanted to make room for antiheroes.

  William Gibson

  Rooms, Antiheroes, Wanted

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• Japan is a wonderful country, a strange mixture of ancient mystique and cyberpunk saturation. It's a monolith of society's achievements, yet maintains a foothold in the past, creating an amazing backdrop for tourings and natives alive. Japan captures the imagination like no other. You never feel quite so far from home as you do in Japan, yet there are no other people on the planet that make you feel as comfortable.

  Corey Taylor

  Country, Home, Memorable

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• For me as a kid, reading cyberpunk was like seeing the world for the first time. Gibson's Neuromancer wasn't just stylistically stunning; it felt like the template for a future that we were actively building. I remember reading Sterling's Islands in the Net and suddenly understanding the disruptive potential of technology once it got out into the street. Cyberpunk felt urgent. It wasn't the future 15 minutes out - it was the future sideswiping you and leaving you in a full-body cast as it passed by.

  Paolo Bacigalupi

  Reading, Kids, Technology

  "How Cyberpunk Saved Sci-Fi" by Paolo Bacigalupi, www.wired.com. June 20, 2012.

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• Every new generation of SF writers remakes cyberpunk - a genre often laced with dystopian subtexts - in its own image.

  Paul Di Filippo

  Generations, Genre, Subtext

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• As far as I know Misha wrote the first cyberpunk poetry.

  John Shirley

  Firsts, Knows

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• For me, the best thing about cyberpunk is that it taught me how to enjoy shopping malls, which used to terrify me. Now I just pretend that the whole thing is two miles below the moon’s surface, and that half the people’s right-brains have been eaten by roboticized steel rats. And suddenly it’s interesting again.

  Rudy Rucker

  Moon, Shopping, Two

  "What Is Cyberpunk?". www.rudyrucker.com. February, 1986.

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• In movies and in television the robots are always evil. I guess I am not into the whole brooding cyberpunk dystopia thing.

  Daniel H. Wilson

  Evil, Robots, Television

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• For years I have been mourning and not for my dead, it is for this boy for whatever corner in my heart died when his childhood slid out of my arms.

  William Gibson

  Heart, Boys, Years

  William Gibson (1974). “A season in heaven: being the log of an expedition after that legendary beast, cosmic consciousness”, Scribner

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• To me there's very few actresses who've had twenty years experience who have that cyberpunk aesthetic already baked in. Scarlett Johansson comes from such edgy films from Lost in Translation to Under the Skin - she's got an incredible body of work and the attitude and the toughness of her really is to me, the Major.

  Rupert Sanders

  Attitude, Skins, Film

  Source: www.gamesradar.com

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• A snappy label and a manifesto would have been two of the very last things on my own career want list. That label enabled mainstream science fiction to safely assimilate our dissident influence, such as it was. Cyberpunk could then be embraced and given prizes and patted on the head, and genre science fiction could continue unchanged.

  William Gibson

  Careers, Two, Labels

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