Quotes from Neuromancer

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from 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, quote from Neuromancer

“All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void...”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Things aren't different. Things are things.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“When the past is always with you, it may as well be present; and if it is present, it will be future as well.”
― William Gibson, quote from 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.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Dar-
winism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb
permanently on the fast-forward button.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Lost, so small amid that dark, hands grown cold, body image fading down corridors of television sky.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“We have sealed ourselves away behind our money, growing inward, generating a seamless universe of self.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Don't let the little fuckers generation gap you.”
― William Gibson, quote from 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.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his dreams, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colourless void... The Sprawl was a long, strange way home now over the Pacific, and he was no Console Man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, hands clawed into the bedslab, temper foam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“His teeth sang in their individual sockets like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Case shuffled into the nearest door and watched the other passengers as he rode. A pair of predatory-looking Christian Scientists were edging toward a trio of young office techs who wore idealized holographic vaginas on their wrists, wet pink glittering under the harsh lighting. The techs licked their perfect lips nervously and eyed the Christian Scientists from beneath lowered metallic lids. The girls looked like tall, exotic grazing animals, swaying gracefully and unconsciously with the movement of the train, their high heels like polished hooves against the gray metal of the car’s floor. Before they could stampede, take flight from the missionaries, the train reached Case’s station.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“His vision crawled with ghost hieroglyphs, translucent lines of symbols arranging themselves against the neutral backdrop of the bunker wall. He looked at the backs of his hands, saw faint neon molecules crawling beneath the skin, ordered by the unknowable code. He raised his right hand and moved it experimentally. It left a faint, fading trail of strobed afterimages.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiled in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like a film compiled of random frames. Symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Rain woke him, a slow drizzle, his feet tangled in coils of discarded fiberoptics. The arcade's sea of sound washed over him, receded, returned. Rolling over, he sat up and held his head.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Something he’d found and lost so many times. It belonged, he knew – he remembered – as she pulled him down, to the meat, the flesh the cowboys mocked. It was a vast thing, beyond knowing, a sea of information coded in spiral and pheromone, infinite intricacy that only the body, in its strong blind way, could ever read.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“The Matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games,' said the voice-over, 'in early graphics programs and military experimentation with cranial jacks.' On the Sony, a two-dimensional space war faded behind a forest of mathematically generated ferns, demonstrating the spatial possibilities of logarithmic spirals; cold blue military footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems, helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and war planes. 'Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... 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, quote from Neuromancer

“You will come with us. We are at home with situations of legal ambiguity. The treaties under which our arm of the Registry operates grant us a great deal of flexibility. And we create flexibility, in situations where it is required.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“And the Flatline aligned the nose of Kuang's sting with the center of the dark below. And dove. Case's sensory input warped with their velocity. His mouth filled with an aching taste of blue. His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sounds of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine spines. The spines split, bisected, split again, exponential growth under the dome of the Tessier-Ashpool ice.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“It was the root of street cool, too, the knowing posture that implied connection, invisible lines up to the hidden levels of influence.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“INTO HER DARKNESS, a churning synaesthesia, where her pain was the taste of old iron, scent of melon, wings of a moth brushing her cheek. She was unconscious, and he was barred from her dreams.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“To call up a demon you must learn its name. Men dreamed that, once, but now it is real in another way. You know that, Case. Your business is to learn the names of programs, the long formal names, names the owners seek to conceal. True names . . .”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Cliches became cliches for a reason; that they usually hold at least a modicum of truth, and the following cliche is truer than most: You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Maelcum a rude boy," said the other, "an' a righteous tug pilot.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Case fell into the prison of his own flesh.”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

“Power, in Case's world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsus, the multinationals that shaped the course of human history, had transcended old barriers. Viewed as organisms, they had attained a kind of immortality. You couldn't kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were others waiting to step up the ladder, assume the vacated position, access the vast banks of corporate memory...”
― William Gibson, quote from Neuromancer

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Popular quotes

“I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty women can bestow.'
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“When Magnus looked at Imasu, he saw Imasu had dropped his head into his hands.
"Er," Magnus said. "Are you quite all right?"
"I was simply overcome," Imasu said in a faint voice.
Magnus preened slightly. "Ah. Well."
"By how awful that was," Imasu said.
Magnus blinked. "Pardon?"
"I can't live a lie any longer!" Imasu burst out. "I have tried to be encouraging. Dignitaries of the town have been sent to me, asking me to plead with you to stop. My own sainted mother begged me, with tears in her eyes - "
"It isn't as bad as all that - "
"Yes, it is!" It was like a dam of musical critique had broken. Imasu turned on him with eyes that flashed instead of shining. "It is worse than you can possibly imagine! When you play, all of my mother's flowers lose the will to live and expire on the instant. The quinoa has no flavor now. The llamas are migrating because of your music, and llamas are not a migratory animal. The children now believe there is a sickly monster, half horse and half large mournful chicken, that lives in the lake and calls out to the world to grant it the sweet release of death. The townspeople believe that you and I are performing arcane magic rituals - "
"Well, that one was rather a good guess," Magnus remarked.
" - using the skull of an elephant, an improbably large mushroom, and one of your very peculiar hats!"
"Or not," said Magnus. "Furthermore, my hats are extraordinary."
"I will not argue with that." Imasu scrubbed a hand through his thick black hair, which curled and clung to his fingers like inky vines. "Look, I know that I was wrong. I saw a handsome man, thought that it would not hurt to talk a little about music and strike up a common interest, but I don't deserve this. You are going to get stoned in the town square, and if I have to listen to you play again, I will drown myself in the lake."
"Oh," said Magnus, and he began to grin. "I wouldn't. I hear there is a dreadful monster living in that lake."
Imasu seemed to still be brooding about Magnus's charango playing, a subject that Magnus had lost all interest in. "I believe the world will end with a noise like the noise you make!"
"Interesting," said Magnus, and he threw his charango out the window.
"Magnus!"
"I believe that music and I have gone as far as we can go together," Magnus said. "A true artiste knows when to surrender."
"I can't believe you did that!"
Magnus waved a hand airily. "I know, it is heartbreaking, but sometimes one must shut one's ears to the pleas of the muse."
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― Cassandra Clare, quote from The Bane Chronicles

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