Ernest Cline Quotes

For me, what makes life enjoyable is having a shared culture and shared references.

I try to communicate in a way that allows people in on what's going on. What's better than references to popular culture?

When you're hanging out with your friends, you reference books and movies, and you don't always know if your friends know what you're referencing. But you throw it out there, and if it connects, it makes people laugh.

TV can be a thread between all of us, and it can be a powerful tool to examine life and love and what we all have in common as humans.

So whenever I hear The Beatles I always feel I've got a lot in common with everybody else.

The people who can step up my experience are those who have a common set of experiences with people I know. Think about it. How often did a total stranger come into your life to make your evening better? Not very often. But the friend of your friend? That happens all the time.

Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds.

We had literary references, so we knew what we were talking about. We could quote things, talk about books we'd read; you can say something, you don't have to explain it.

Sports can bring people together in a way that politics cannot.

We are all the same. Some people wear vests and live in Missouri, and some people wear tuxes and live in Hollywood. But we all talk about what's going on in the news. We have relationships. We make mistakes.

'Awkward' implies both solidarity and implication. Nobody is exempt.

Pop culture and entertainment can be dismissed as surface, but it's not. It's the language we all speak, and it's the connection point between people all over the world.

Some communities are formed through schools, churches, workplaces. But much of how we learn about one another as a society comes from physically being together in places like skating rinks.

If a joke makes our tribe laugh, we assume it will make other friend-tribes laugh.

There's a difference between business acquaintances and friends. I consider a friend any time we eat together at the same restaurant, or he's eaten at my house, or I've eaten at his house.

People are so much more interested in making connections, and finding common ground, and sharing experiences than sometimes their governments are.

I think that human beings are often looking for a reason to relate.

Beyond the formative effects of reading on the individuals composing society, the fact that they have read the same books gives them experiences and ideas in common. These constitute a kind of shorthand of ideas which helps make communication quicker and more efficient. That is what we mean when we say figuratively of another person, We speak the same language.

Everybody uses pop culture as a shorthand. You might make an obscure reference to Monty Python or Iron Eagle that only some people will get, but if they do it conveys a world of meaning.

The whole country was tied together by radio. We all experienced the same heroes and comedians and singers. They were giants.

The capacity for friendship usually goes with highly developed civilizations. The ability to cultivate people differs by culture and class; but on the whole, educated people have more ways to make friends... . In England, for instance, you find everyone in your class has read the same books. Here, people grope for something in common-like a newly engaged girl who came to me and said, "It's absolutely wonderful! His uncle and my cousin were on the same football team.

The best talk is artless, the talk of people trying to reassure or comfort themselves, women in the sun, grouped around baby carriages, talking about their weeks in the hospital or the way meat has gone up, or men in saloons, talking to combat the loneliness everyone feels.

I don't know what to say to people. It's become so big. It's become part of the cultural environment. For the first and second Twiglight, I knew exactly what to say to people. If you don't know what the story is by now, then you've probably never been to the cinema before. How about, "Why not go to the cinema for once?" I don't know.

It creates community when you talk about private things and you can find other people that have the same things.

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.