Ready Player One/Quotes

Wizards of the Coast: How much of the material in the book—the songs, the games, the movies—were you personally a fan of (in other words, I suppose, how much of yourself might be in the character of the OASIS creator, James Halliday)? And how much research did you need to undertake to brush up on the Atari 2600 version of Adventure, or Wargames, or Family Ties—in other, how much of yourself was there in the character of Wade?
Ernest Cline: I'm a longtime fan of nearly everything mentioned in the book. I made Halliday my age and gave him all of the same obsessions as me, because that allowed me to pay tribute to those things in the story, which made writing it a lot of fun. I also did it out of pure laziness, so I wouldn't have to do a bunch of research. Instead, I just drew upon all of the pop culture already stockpiled in my own brain.

—Ready Player One - Spotlight Interviews (Dungeons & Dragons Official Website, October 2011)

"Ernest Cline's Ready Player One is a story that glorifies nerd culture more than anything else. It places late '70s to early '90s media on a pedestal, equates a character's worth to how much trivia they’re able to memorize, and the protagonist, Wade Watts, literally saves the day by getting the highest possible score in a game of Pac-Man."

—Lucas DeRuyter, How 'Ready Player One' Can Help Remedy Toxic Fandoms (FANDOM, March 2018)