Quotes from The Peripheral

William Gibson ·  485 pages

Rating: (13.2K votes)


“Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt labels on the result. Handles. Then speak of the handles as though they were things in themselves.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“Because people who couldn’t imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn’t need to imagine, because they already were.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“Encryption isn’t optional, when we address one another,” she said.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“If you fancy resenting the tedious, I recommend intentional communities, particularly those led by charismatics.” “You”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“So now, in her day, he said, they were headed into androgenic, systemic, multiplex, seriously bad shit, like she sort of already knew, figured everybody did, except for people who still said it wasn't happening, and those people were mostly expecting the Second Coming, anyway.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral



“Be quiet, darling. Let pattern recognition have its way.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt labels on the result. Handles. Then speak of the handles as though they were things in themselves.” “I’ve”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“Unstuck her in time, day-sleeping in her bedroom. How old was she? Seven, seventeen, twenty-seven? Dusk or dawn? Couldn’t tell by the light outside. Checked her phone. Evening. The house silent, her mother probably asleep. Out through the smell of her grandfather’s fifty years of National Geographic, shelved in the hall.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“What Shaylene saw as Burton’s primary symptom of traumatic stress, Flynne thought, was his ongoing failure to ask her out.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“And this other evening light, rainy, rose and silver, and to her left a river the color of cold lead. Dark tumble of city, towers in the distance, few lights.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral



“Netherton was watching the intricate texture of her bustier, which resembled a microminiature model of some Victorian cast-iron station roof, its countless tiny panes filmed as by the coal smoke of fingerling locomotives, yet flexing as she breathed and spoke.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“A few stray bits of Lego edged fitfully about among lower strata,”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. —H. G. WELLS”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“It’s like wearing your cock ring to meet the pope, and making sure he sees it.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“You're from the future, Mr Netherton?"
"Not exactly," he said. "I'm in the future that would result from my not being here. But since I am, it isn't your future. Here.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral



“a chronic malcontent, albeit quite a purposeless one.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“History had its fascinations, but could be burdensome.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“Because people who couldn’t imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn’t need to imagine, because they already were. She’d said it was always a mistake, to believe those people were different, special, infected with something that was inhuman, subhuman, fundamentally other.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“He gestured for it to sit. The bench vibrated briefly in anticipation, shedding drops of rain. The peripheral sat.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“That evil wasn’t glamorous, but just the result of ordinary half-assed badness, high school badness, given enough room, however that might happen, to become its bigger self. Bigger, with more horrible results, but never more than the cumulative weight of ordinary human baseness.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral



“Those fuckers,” Janice said, meaning the football players, “they get me doing hate Kegels.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“terror should remain the sole prerogative of the state.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“Conspiracy theory’s got to be simple. Sense doesn’t come into it. People are more scared of how complicated shit actually is than they ever are about whatever’s supposed to be behind the conspiracy.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“Something stilled the part of him that knitted narrative, that grew the underbrush of lies in which he lived.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral



“stray bits of Lego edged fitfully about among lower strata, like bright rectilinear beetles.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“Reality television. It merged with politics. Then with performance art.” They walked on. “I think that already happened, back home,”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


“but Leon wasn’t due any disability. Wasn’t, their mother said, like he could claim to have caught the dumbfuck there. Not”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral


About the author

William Gibson
Born place: in Conway, South Carolina, The United States
Born date March 17, 1948
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