Quotes from John Scalzi

Listen, you have to understand something. In all of the history of professional sports, the Cubs are the ultimate symbol of complete failure. The championship of baseball is something called the World Series, and it's been so long since the Cubs have won it that no one who is alive could remember the last time they won it. It's so long that no one alive knew anyone who was alive when they won it. We're talking centuries of abject failure here.

A fourth part of his brain was saying, This is the part where you run and scream a lot. He was listening to the fourth part.

Szilard looked over at Robbins. "Is it true?" he said. "Which part, sir?" Robbins said. "That you don't like General Mattson," Szilard said. "He can take some getting used to, sir," Robbins said. "By which he means I'm an asshole

That's the human brain," Attavio VI said. "It creates patterns when there aren't any. Imagines causality when there is none. Imagines a narrative where none exists. It's in the design of the brain itself. It's primed to lie.

That's the point of rumors. They're not based on anything, so nothing is very effective against them. Truth is no defense, and the people fielding these rumors know it.

Just accept you're drinking from the fire hose and open wide.

I don't think it matters what age you are when you figure it out," Brous said. "I think the important thing is to figure it out before someone else tells you what you want to be, and they get it wrong.

You strike me as a 'glass half-empty' kind of guy, sir," he said. "I'm a 'the glass is half-empty and filled with poison' kind of guy, actually," Wilson said.

Really really really difficult, Tony allowed. But theoretically possible because, hey, it's a quantum physics universe.

In politics as in high school, who you are is to a large extent defined by who you sit with at lunch, and there was no doubt about it, the Earth was sitting at the loser table. It was not, Bob Pope thought, the true destiny of the Earth in our universe to be counted among the diplomatic equivalent of the acne-ridden and the furtively masturbating.

You can't afford anthropomorphic biases when some of the aliens most like us would rather make human hamburgers than peace.

And also because I know if I've figured it out, someone else has too, because there's always someone else smarter out there, who may not have ethics.

The short version was death, disease, despots and destruction. The longer version had kept him up wondering what the hell was wrong with people.

The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another—it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time.

We're in the wrong universe for fair.

He decided he'd rather die as a fundamentally decent human being than live as the sort of asshole who'd tear out someone's liver to get into an escape pod.

You suggested this to her, didn't you." "Why do you say that?" "Because I don't know if you've ever met the Countess Nohamapetan, but she's about as sentimental as a fucking alligator.

It's war, you jackasses," Keyes snapped. "I'm sorry it's not terribly convenient or comfortable for you.

I could not personally care less about whether JT Leroy turns out to be fictional or not. I find fictional people writing fiction no more or less objectionable than real people writing fiction, because it's fiction

What was your job back on Earth? I've always been curious. I taught eighth-grade math in Tallahassee. Huh, I said. That's not what I expected. Are you kidding? Powell said back. You try teaching algebra to a bunch of little shitheads for thirty-eight years straight. The way I figure it I've got about another decade before my rage from that gets entirely burned up.

If you ever want to feel like you're on the verge of total, abject bowel-releasing terror, try making your way a klick or two out of a forest, at night, with the certain feeling you're being hunted. It makes you feel alive, it really does, but not in a way you want to feel alive.

I was getting away with something in my own way. But then I get here and saw you, brain-dead and with tubes coming out of every part of your body. And I realized I wasn't getting away with anything. Just like you didn't get away with anything. You were just born, fucked around for a while, got hit by a car and died, and that's your whole life story right there. You don't win by getting through all you life not having done anything.

I'm saying pay attention to when it makes sense to say something," Vann said. "And pay attention to when it makes sense to hold it in for the moment. I get that you're used to saying what you think to anyone, anytime. That comes from being an entitled rich kid.

One of Harvey's guiding lights in terms of strategies was simplicity; all things being equal, Harvey preferred the course of action that let him get into the middle of things and then just buckle down.