Quote

I had a list of things that science fiction, particularly American science fiction, to me seemed to do with tedious regularity. One was to not have strong female protagonists. One was to envision the future, whatever it was, as America.

William Gibson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Gibson
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 17
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Conway
South Carolina
William Ford Gibson
Things
Female
Envision
Fiction
Regularity
Whatever
Protagonists
American
Tedious
Future
List
Strong
Lists
Science
Particularly
America
Seemed

More quotes by William Gibson

Image
I assume that - because you can get degrees in journalism from very reputable universities - I assume that people can be trained to be journalists. I've never been entirely certain that anyone can be trained to be a novelist in the same way.
William Gibson
Image
Secrets...are the very root of cool.
William Gibson
Image
For me, the melancholy of the late XXth Century is walking late at night by the Mont Blanc pen store and seeing these things always strike me as simulacra of luxury items. They seem like fakes.
William Gibson
Image
I think with one exception I've never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed.
William Gibson
Image
The nature of emergent technology is, as Kevin Kelly once said, right out of control. It's an element of human evolution that's completely out of control. It's sort of driving itself, and I don't see it ceasing to do that.
William Gibson
Image
Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality.
William Gibson
Image
If you make something, it's an artifact. It's something that somebody or some corporate entity has caused to come into being. A great many human beings have thought about each of the artifacts that surround us. Different degrees of intelligence and attention have been brought to bear on anything.
William Gibson
Image
His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.(Speaking about Ronald Reagan)
William Gibson
Image
Laney had recently noticed that the only people who had titles that clearly described their jobs had jobs he wouldn't have wanted.
William Gibson
Image
I like the idea of people who've had some success in one form secretly wanting to be something else I have some of that myself. I look for it in other people who've established themselves in some particular art form, and then you find out that they really would like to design running shoes, or edit literary magazines or something.
William Gibson
Image
If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.
William Gibson
Image
There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul.
William Gibson
Image
Somewhere, deep within her, surfaces a tiny clockwork submarine. There are times when you can only take the next step. And then another.
William Gibson
Image
If I meet someone and discover that they're an absolute, very earnest nationalist, it's unlikely that I'm going to get much closer to them. I don't understand them. It doesn't matter where they're from, I just don't get it. I'm a multi-national kind of guy.
William Gibson
Image
Our hardware is likely to turn into something like us a lot faster than we are likely to turn into something like our hardware...I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't.
William Gibson
Image
A part of that [timewrap] for me was growing up in a culture that violence had always been a part of. It wasn't an aberration, though I realize that in retrospect. I grew up in the part of the U.S. where all of Cormac McCarthy's novels are set and that's a pretty violent place.
William Gibson
Image
I'd always maintained that much of the anarchy and craziness of the early internet had a lot to do with the fact that governments just hadn't realised it was there.
William Gibson
Image
The street has its own use for things.
William Gibson
Image
Addictions [...] started out like magical pets, pocket monsters. They did extraordinary tricks, showed you things you hadn't seen, were fun. But came, through some gradual dire alchemy, to make decisions for you. Eventually, they were making your most crucial life-decisions. And they were [...] less intelligent than goldfish.
William Gibson
Image
The future is there, Cayce hears herself say, looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now.
William Gibson