Cyberpunk Quotes

Sooner or later we stop running, stop climbing, stop reaching for the sky. We stop pushing ourselves toward unattainable goals because common sense tells us that the only logical thing to do is push ourselves toward the attainable ones. If running through the world like kids on the playground is a kind of dream, then at a certain point we just stop dreaming. ~ Sam A. Patel

Alex thrust her hand and half her arm into the labyrinth of light.
Her stare blanked, and in the halo of the matrix her eyes and glyphs blazed so radiantly she looked as if she were being consumed by a primordial fire.

"She just stuck her hand into Machim Command's central server matrix!"

Caleb smiled, watching on in blatant awe. "She does that. ~ G.S. Jennsen

Technology isn't rational; with luck, it's a runaway horse, foaming at the mouth, ready to throw itself off a cliff in desperation. Our problem is that culture's tied to that horse. ~ Martín Felipe Castagnet

The Haunting was the feeling you got sometimes, in the Vurt, the real world calling you home. There's more to life than this. This is just a game. ~ Jeff Noon

It was so easy to be you. And to lack and want were the complete opposite: hard, cold, unrelenting, and hollow. ~ Cindy Pon

Level-1 or world space is an anthropomorphically scaled, predominantly vision-configured, massively multi-slotted reality system that is obsolescing very rapidly.

Garbage time is running out.

Can what is playing you make it to level-2? ~ Nick Land

This is a psychofield, a thoughtspace, essentially unstable. While most people conceptualise thinking as this straightforward linear thing, I see ideas spreading out into alternatives before one is selected. In this place every notion can potentially become reality. ~ Tade Thompson

Today we no longer fear technology. It's no longer a question of assimilation. What remains to be seen is what we are about to become. ~ Jason Heller

The infrastructure of power is human neurosoft compatible ROM. Authority instantiates itself as linear instruction pathways, genetic baboonery, scriptures, traditions, rituals, and gerontocratic hierarchies, resonant with the dominator ur-myth that the nature of reality has already been decided. If you want to find ICE, try thinking about what is blocking you out of the past. It certainly isn't a law of nature. Temporalization decompresses intensity, installing constraint. ~ Nick Land

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

Well, what brand of water do you drink?"
"Just what was in the faucet, sir," says Delphi humbly. "I--I did try to boil it--"
"Good God. ~ James Tiptree Jr.

She made us realize that human dignity is inalienable, and as long as there is still breath left in your body, there will always be something left to fight for. ~ Sam A. Patel

Riots followed hunger like thunder follows lightning. ~ Gary A. Ballard

..you can't just break through a person's defenses like thatl the defenses are a part of the person, they are the person. It's our nature to have hidden depths. It's like...skinning a frog and saying, 'Now I understand this frog, because I've seen what's inside it.' But when you skin it, it dies. You haven't understood a frog, you've understood a corpse. ~ Raphael Carter

I had recognized her. They had tried to tear her out, but she had lived in me--deep in my heart and secret, nameless and indescribable, yet never entirely gone. She had been a face in the window of every departing train, a form seen from the back on every crowded street, always just out of my sight, always turning away. And I had known her when she came to me, though I could not say it, and though the very thought had sent my mind skidding across the ice into unconsciousness. ~ Raphael Carter

Destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap chrome. ~ William Gibson

I blinked, and the world exploded with data. Images, scanned documents and photographs, a whirlwind of numbers, under-the-table deals, and whispered words. ~ Jason Heller

She was everywhere. She was screaming in her tortured body. She was watching from cameras in every room. She was the false weather system and the storage devices. She was the gate keeper, throwing six shirts over her swan-brothers necks...opening six doors for her brothers to step through as young men, though their bodies were long gone, used up by the organ banks of the upper castes.

A Lamentation of Swans ~ J.A. Ironside

You could love someone so strongly, for so long, and still forget - until the memories returned. ~ Jason Heller

What we call the xenosphere, the psychic link that you are all able to exploit, is made up of strands of alien fungi-like filaments and neurotransmitters. We call the xenoform ascomycetes xenosphericus. It is everywhere, in every environment on Earth. These delicate filaments are too small for the naked eye to see, and they are fragile, but they form multiple links with the natural fungi on human skin. They have an affinity for nerve endings and quickly access the central nervous system. Everybody linked to this network of xenoforms, this xenosphere is uploading information constantly, passively, without knowing. There is a global store of information in the very atmosphere, a worldmind, which only people like you can access. ~ Tade Thompson

Their detectors, like everything else about them and their small, shrinking world, were always looking for the wrong weapons, Sem thought as he began to sharpen his pencil. ~ Jason Heller

...even the Gujarat-bot dreams of electric sheep. ~ Tade Thompson

I think they are a better race than humans ever were. ~ Angelo Tsanatelis

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 imagine 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

Alice in Wonderland, Alice down the rabbit hole, Alice out in Cyberspace, flung along the lines of data, flying across fields of light, the night cities that live only behind her eyes. ~ Melissa Scott

The thick, stagnant air reeked of perfume, cigarettes, and exhaust. Everyone was barefaced, wanting to flaunt their features instead of hiding beneath blank masks. To be able to flirt with their lips, to be able to kiss. But I wasn't fooled by the dark - the air was still poisonous. Even if we couldn't see the brown haze, it smothered our city lit in neon. ~ Cindy Pon

That's how we should celebrate all birthdays... with an ass-kicking. ~ Mord McGhee

Science Fiction is what they promised; Cyberpunk is what we got. ~ Sean Kennedy

I feel something else break through the numbness. Something raw. Something primal. Something visceral. ~ Sam A. Patel

Perhaps that's what the symbol means. What's the point of anarchy when the society you live in can shove you into a box no matter how hard you rebel? He can't help but think that's why the system evolved. To contain the uncontainable. Limit the prospects of those with limitless capacity for thought, creativity and analysis. ~ Ren Warom

A Dick and Jane story written in blood and battered bone.

See Spot.

See Spot run.

See Spot run from a gaping chest wound.

Run Spot run.

See Detective smear Spot into a baggy for DNA testing. ~ J.E. Mac

There are no limits, only plateaus. ~ Sam A. Patel

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

It was almost as if we'd passed our gaze from the healthy skin of a supermodel to the ragged infections of a burn-victim's corpse. Any industry buildings that had once stood proudly in the city were now hollowed-out skeletons with tents decorating their innards. The tall apartment buildings were burned and then rebuilt into towering layers of jagged, cut metal, brightly colored canvas roofs, solar panels, and graffiti. ~ Michael-Scott Earle

I saw them do it. Chip vandals. Right there on Commerce, behind the main road...They cut his head open. They know I watched. ~ Anna L. Davis

The beautiful creatures are often the most dangerous," she murmured. ~ Cindy Pon

the briefest flash of pale, pale ice over a thin-boned shoulder. Neon caught the red lotus splayed on her elbow and lit it on fire. ~ K.C. Alexander

She glimpsed the sexless mounds between their legs and shuddered. For some reason, she found their lack of genitals uncannily obscene, an indignity, a piece of humanity they had been denied. ~ Jason Heller

A washing machine repairman dying of laryngeal cancer had only one recurring thought: There is no excuse for making an angel cry. ~ Tade Thompson

Everywhere they touched, my skin responded. It sent signals to the receiver, to the synth, to the amp, and the sounds were broadcast over the PA. I'd set it to translate this first song into a single key, so the notes built into chords, then broke apart. I had ways to distort, to sustain, to make a note tremble as if it were bowed. It was me: I was playing me; they were playing me. I was the instrument, the conduit, the transmutation of loss into elegy, song into prayer, my own prayers into notes, notes into song. Body and music, fingers and hands, they drew me out. ~ Jason Heller

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

It was not until the appearance of cyberpunk in the 1980s that SF began to grapple in a broadly meaningful way with the reality of computers as something other than giant mainframes tended by crewcut IBM nerds. ~ Paul Di Filippo

The loss of a Netlimb was a queer sensation, a kind of panicked tickling as the brain strained to maintain its binary illusion that there actually was a limb where a limb no longer existed. ~ Gary A. Ballard

..she can feel that burden sometimes like a wall pressing in over the dome of the false sky that bounds the city.
*Someone has to*, she says again, as if the ghost is somewhere in the machines that create this Seaheaven, as if he might have cared and turns away, walks back down the vivid street, the dust soft and almost real against her feet. ~ Melissa Scott

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

It was true. Nothing was ever lost. And nothing was ever forgotten, no matter how painful. The city was like a heart that way. She had four chambers, too. She had arteries that led in and out. She kept things moving. She kept the oxygen flowing in and out, in and out, clean for dirty, dirty for clean, the filthy midnight whispers for the purest morning prayers ~ Jason Heller

Judge not what is best by pleasure, though to nature seeming meet, created as thou art to nobler end, holy and pure, conformity divine. It's Milton, Paradise Lost, something Ashey said to me when I told him I wasn't into porn. He's always quoting stuff like that; he thinks it will inspire me. It does. ~ Jason Heller

Maybe that was why it was almost always the underclasses, the women, the people of color, the gay people, the ones who were already stigmatized as being vulnerable, availble, trapped by the body, who took the risk of the wire. ~ Melissa Scott

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

Time moves in one direction, memory in another. ~ William Gibson

This is what it meant to be a you, to have. To be genetically cultivated as a perfect human specimen before birth - vaccinated and fortified, calibrated and optimized. ~ Cindy Pon

He turns off the techno-shit in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern. ~ Neal Stephenson

I'd caught what cameras call an updraft: just as the viewers got over the first rush of interest, others smelled the excitement and tuned in. The surprise of the newcomers strengthened the scent, attracting still more people, in a spiral that could make the feedback escalate out of control. Wave upon wave of astonishment crashed through me. I tried to look down, but the curiosity of millions forced my head back up. I stood there staring at the whale like someone forced to look into the sun, unable to turn away, though my mind cringed from the sight and my eyes were burning. It was not just an updraft, but riptide: feedback so strong that it flooded out my own emotions and derailed my thoughts. The audience grew so large and so greedy that it wouldn't even let me blink. ~ Raphael Carter

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

her searches told her all mothers felt this way, at one time or another. There always came a day - no matter how hard one tried, no matter how tightly one locked the door and barred the windows - when the outside world would come creeping in. When your baby's head would turn away from the glowing hearth of home and toward the glitter of false promises. ~ Jason Heller

Our cyberworld and cyberspace are infested with so many cyberscoundrels, cybercriminals, cybersluts and cyberpunks - that is virtually impossible for the cybercops (cyberpolice) to catch or stop them using known cybertechniques and save the cyberphobia of millions of cybernauts, many of whom are cyberholics. ~ Tapan Bhattacharya

I go outside, bundled against the wind from the east. I wander the streets of my past, waiting for one more dawn. ~ Jason Heller

Never been here before. It's like something on the top floor of a luxury high-rise casino in Atlantic City, where they put semi-retarded adults from South Philly after they've blundered into the mega jackpot Hiro Protagonist - Snow Crash ~ Neal Stephenson

The mind has doors...even as the body does. And when you drill new holes, you tap old hungers. ~ Raphael Carter

There is a great deal of cyberpunk that I admire, especially the work of William Gibson which I think is excellent. Somehow he speaks from his own heart and cyber punk is what comes out. ~ Robert Sheckley

...glimpses through the clouds of numerous and enormous Second Free Zone residential arks and barges lumbering through their selective tracks like a slow-motion game of hide and seek played by listless, blunt whales. ~ Kieran Shea

He is an electric ghost painted in the colours of a dead moment. ~ Joseph MacKinnon

Overall, she seemed to be going for a sort of mid-'80s postapocalyptic cyberpunk girl-next-door look. And it was working for me, in a big way. In a word: hot. ~ Ernest Cline

...the wires he wore had grown all through him, as the roots of trees replace the flesh of corpses; and the vast coils of the whale's brain wrapped around him like a gray constricting snake. I pitied him: but it was probably stray feedback from the Net... ~ Raphael Carter

You'd sell out too if you had half a chance."

Kumo snorted and shook her head. "You can't sell out if you don't buy in... ~ Misha

what is genuine emotion and what is business strategy. The modern condition. ~ Steven Kotler

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

I am a more modern female vampire since I came just when our world was disappearing due to the intromission of this future.-Enyo ~ Carolina Cody Aldaz

To watch me is to eat glass. Can't you feel me glittering in your stomach? ~ Misha

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. ~ William Gibson

My experiment has demonstrated that people from the past can be artificially reincarnated. The purpose is so people from Twinmortal do not commit the same error that we did.-Amaranth ~ Carolina Cody Aldaz

...if you can achieve total intimacy with a piece of cable that costs fifty-nine kopeks, what good is it? How can you say you have something special with a person, when you can get the same thing with anyone in Russia in fifteen minutes? ~ Raphael Carter

Can you look at this brilliant wound? ~ Keishi Ando

What use was time to those who'd soon achieve Digital Immortality? ~ Clyde DeSouza

Slums are always a marvel; how human desperation can seem to warp the very laws of physics. ~ Sam J. Miller

The Yoruba say 'o d'oju ala' when someone dies. I will see you in dreams. ~ Tade Thompson

I don't believe in socialism but I don't believe in capitalism either. We are small, governments are large, we survive in the cracks. Cold comfort. ~ Maureen F. McHugh

I need to fight for the preservation of the Earth type planets and its coexistence with worlds after death.-Banyan ~ Carolina Cody Aldaz

Shifting culture requires a confluence of inciting incidents. Something directional that leads to a tribal fracturing and reknitting. Often shows up in language first. In music. Fashion. It can feel a little like hope." He points at the images. "This doesn't feel like hope. ~ Steven Kotler

He kissed the tip of my finger, and I smiled at this. I would not be able to heal him, but he would not hate me for failing. That would be enough for both of us. ~ Jason Heller

The implants just give you a new set of reproductive-free imperatives, that's all. The rest, thank the gods, is up to you. They wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't give rise to the most troubling and complex problems of the heart. They are what makes all this glory, this madness worthwhile. We are born to the trouble as sparks fly upwards, that is what is great about us, man, woman, transgen, nute. ~ Ian McDonald

That's sad. How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something ... real." Nin interlocked his fingers, and stretched out his arms. "Real love, real friends, real body parts ... ~ Jess C. Scott

Rilke knew what was up. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, one distant day, live right into the answer. What's truer than that... ~ Steven Kotler

This is what she hated most about the on-line world, the shadows as much as the bright lights of the legal nets: too many men assumes that the nets were exclusively their province, and were startled and angry to find out that it wasn't. ~ Melissa Scott

My nerves still spark like ricocheting tracer bullets. ~ Jason Heller

2 SECONDS

He was on her in an instant to brace her against the wall. She kicked and clawed at her unseen attacker, skin and irises ablaze in caustic gold.

She fired anew, and the point-blank shot broke through his defenses, grazing his hip. He ignored the harsh sting to bring his Daemon up between them.

1 SECOND ~ G.S. Jennsen

You think we have a connection because of all the things you've sucked out of my mind by screening, but that isn't real. Trust comes when you've worked with someone for years; it doesn't speed up just because you can think fast, and it doesn't materialize when you stick a cable in someone's head. What you get from screening me isn't friendship, it's data. We're strangers. ~ Raphael Carter

From up here, the city below looked calm. Peaceful. Serene.

It was a lie.

Mia could feel the lie in her bones, in the foreboding creeping along the fine hairs on her skin. But mostly she could feel it in her head, where preparations were underway across Romane to meet the coming chaos. ~ G.S. Jennsen

In the electronic game world, I know I have a reputation for doing the cyberpunk thing, and for doing the serious epic fantasy thing, but if you go back to when I was a kid, I've been a Disney fan all my life. ~ Warren Spector

Bodybreaking, they called it. What happened when the breaks finally killed you. The moment your mind's hold on the here and now finally ruptured forever and you broke free from your body. ~ Sam J. Miller

Don't let the little fuckers generation gap you. ~ William Gibson

Machinic desire can seem a little inhuman, as it rips up political cultures, deletes traditions, dissolves subjectivities, and hacks through security apparatuses, tracking a soulless tropism to zero control. This is because what appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources. ~ Nick Land

You can't hack your destiny, brute force ... you need a back door, a side channel into Life. ~ Clyde DeSouza

Five-Year," a term given to cash minted before 2023. That was the last year cash was produced without embedded chips that could trace every use of the currency as if it was a debit or credit card. ~ Gary A. Ballard

like all of her, wrong sex, wrong class, wrong attitude... ~ Melissa Scott

One of the things I like about Cyber World is that it shows cyberpunk has left its heteronormative boy's club roots behind in the dust. ~ Jason Heller

The Machinery are a bunch of fuckwits who believe that the human body is best conceptualised as a machine, and that if behaviour is stripped down to only what is functional, a higher form of humanity will emerge. This means actions that lead to the fulfilment of their basic needs only. Disease is a malfunction. You can see where this goes. They're boring as hell, they only speak to convey information and they are more inflexible than actual machines. They are said to be good spouses and accountants. The one beside me has a distinct self-image, fully identified as a machine. He repeats to himself mentally, 'You are a machine, you are a machine. ~ Tade Thompson

standard Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, or SQUID, interface. The same kind doctors use to communicate with surgically implanted components like pacemakers. ~ Sam A. Patel

We are a species born from the planet. If the machines truly want to protect the Earth type planets they must learn to take care of us too.- Sun Wukong ~ Carolina Cody Aldaz

The best way to hide the truth is to shroud it in myth ~ Sam A. Patel