Quotes from Virtual Light

William Gibson ·  304 pages

Rating: (19.2K votes)


“Well,' Rydell said, trying to pick up his end, 'I was watching this one old movie last night-'

Sublett perked up. 'Which one?'

Dunno,' Rydell said. 'This guy's in L.A. and he's just met this girl. Then he picks up a pay phone, 'cause it's ringing. Late at night. It's some guy in a missile silo somewhere who knows they've just launched theirs at the Russians. He's trying to phone his dad, or his brother, or something. Says the world's gonna end in short order. Then the guy who answered the phone hears these soldiers come in and shoot the guy. The guy on the phone, I mean.'

Suhlett closed his eyes, scanning his inner trivia-banks. 'Yeah? How's it end?'

Dunno,' Rydell said. 'I went to sleep.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


“Berry,” Pursley said, “you’re in trouble, son. A cop. And an honest one. In trouble. In deep, spectacular, and, please, I have to say this, clearly heroic shit.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


“They'd run all these tests on him and decided he wasn't racist. He wasn't, either, but not because he thought about it particularly. He just couldn't see the point. It just made for a lot of hassle, being that way, so why be that way? Nobody was going to go back and live where they lived before, were they, and if they did (he vaguely suspected) there wouldn't be any Mongolian barbecue and maybe we'd all be listening to Pentecostal Metal and anyway the President was black.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


“How it was, when you lost things, it was like you only knew for the first time that you'd ever had them. (...) You didn't wake up every morning and say yes and yes to every little thing. But little things were what it was all made of. Or just somebody to see, there, when you woke up.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


“Neighborhoods that mainly operated at night had a way of looking a lot worse in the morning.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light



“They had remained silent during the trial, their leader stating only that the disease was God’s vengeance on sinners and the unclean. Lean men with shaven heads and blank, implacable eyes, they were God’s gunmen, and would stare, as such, from all the tapes of history, forever. But”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


“The dream recedes, but leaves a residue.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


“But this feeling had come, that day, and swallowed everything up inside it, so big you couldn’t really prove it was there except by an arithmetic of absence and the memory of better days.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


“His toes were making little squelching noises, each time he took a step, and what if the last thing you knew before you died was just some pathetic discomfort like that, like your shoes were soaked and your socks were wet, and you weren’t ever going to get to change them? Rydell”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


“Stormin’,” he said, like he was glad to note the world outside continuing on any recognizable course at all, however drastic.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light



“Ain’t all that simple,” he said. “It’s everything I been brought up to be. Can’t all be bullshit, can it?” Rydell, glancing over at him, took pity. “Naw,” he said, “I guess it wouldn’t have to be, necessarily, all of it, but it’s just—” “What they bring you all up to be, Berry?” Rydell had to think about it. “Republican,” he said, finally.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


About the author

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

“Emotions are built on layers. Beneath hatred is usually anger; beneath anger is frustration; beneath frustration is hurt; beneath hurt is fear. If you keep expressing your feelings, you will generally move through them in that order. What begins with “I hate you” culminates in “I’m scared. I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
― Mark Goulston, quote from Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior


“You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.”
― J.D. Salinger, quote from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey


“A reader doesn't really see the characters in a story; he feels them.”
― Cornelia Funke, quote from Muerte de tinta


“And what's wrong with dimming the harsh reality of life a little, anyway? In essence, being alive is a bloody long and hard walk to death. Why not make it as pleasant along the way as you can?”
― Lucinda Riley, quote from The Light Behind the Window


“In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes, and to make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways which are always different. American women never manage the outward concerns of the family, or conduct a business, or take a part in political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor of the fields, or to make any of those laborious exertions which demand the exertion of physical strength.

No families are so poor as to form an exception to this rule. If on the one hand an American woman cannot escape from the quiet circle of domestic employments, on the other hand she is never forced to go beyond it. Hence it is that the women of America, who often exhibit a masculine strength of understanding and a manly energy, generally preserve great delicacy of personal appearance and always retain the manners of women, although they sometimes show that they have the hearts and minds of men.

Nor have the Americans ever supposed that one consequence of democratic principles is the subversion of marital power, of the confusion of the natural authorities in families. They hold that every association must have a head in order to accomplish its object, and that the natural head of the conjugal association is man. They do not therefore deny him the right of directing his partner; and they maintain, that in the smaller association of husband and wife, as well as in the great social community, the object of democracy is to regulate and legalize the powers which are necessary, not to subvert all power.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, quote from De la Démocratie en Amérique, tome II


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