Quotes from John Scalzi

Ultimately, people write to be understood (excepting Gertrude Stein and Tristan Tzara, who were intentionally being difficult).

So we're the monster police, too," I said to Tom. "Correct," he replied. "The only real question is, who are the monsters?

High-risk, high-reward situations where the path to success isn't laid out but has to be cut by machetes through a jungle filled with poison toads.

Pope was aware there were other ways to get more diplomatic respect than bigger guns, of course. But while other diplomatic maneuvers sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, ultimately a big damn gun always commanded respect.

Pleasure doing business with you, Chad," Holloway said, setting down the infopanel. "Please die in a fire, Jack," Bourne said.

The short version is 'Yes, but.' The slightly longer version is 'No, and.' Which version would you like?

Listen to me or don't. But if you don't, you'll be dead. And then where will you be? Dead, that's where.

It takes a certain kind of dog to willingly demote himself from alpha dog, and that dog was Carl. Holloway would have to speak to him about it, for what little good it would do, Carl being a dog and all.

Humans, being intermediary creatures in both time and space, did not fully appreciate the value of life at every physical and temporal scale.

The only real question is, who are the monsters?" "They ask that question in every monster movie, you know. It's an actual trope." "I know," Tom said. "What does it say about us that it's relevant every single time they ask it?

The ientcio wishes to inform you that we have indeed received those messages from SETI and have found them … amusing is probably the best word. Television is much more interesting.

Well, let's start with the big one," Creek said. "You're your own nation." Robin considered that for a moment. "For your sake, that had better not be a comment about the size of my ass," she said.   The

And before that, there was, oh, I don't know, editors experiencing demonic possessions and devouring lagging midlist writers. It's always something.

Mathematics were not the usual dream material for Marce. Most of his dreams, historically speaking, were the standard rehashing of the events of the last few days in an inchoate, plotless manner, with or without pants.

But of course not meaning harm isn't the same as not doing harm.

It's the truth." "Oh, my daughter," Huma said, and smiled. "Don't tell me you don't know how little that actually means.

When asked about it, Harvey called it his Occam's razor theory of combat: The simplest way of kicking someone's ass was usually the correct one.

Describe the smell to me." "Are you serious right now?" "Yes, I want to know." "It's like a family of raccoons hotboxed themselves to death in a dumpster, and someone distilled their fermented remains." "Huh," Satie said. "I usually just say it smells like Malört, but I like your version, too.

I had been getting sidetracked by the idea that an entire fearsome race of aliens had given themselves goofy names because of the names I had thoughtlessly given two of them more than a decade before;

But imagine you're a tapeworm, and then suddenly you're Goethe. It's like that.

Zoë's tonsils for once." Magdy was

A newspaper publisher. In the late 1800s the United States and Spain were warming up for a war over Cuba, and Hearst sent an illustrator to Cuba to make pictures of the event. When the illustrator got there, he sent a telegram to Hearst saying that as far as he could see, there was no war coming and that he was going home. Hearst sent back that he should stay and said, 'You furnish the pictures, and I will furnish the war.' And he did.

I saw the light go out in her eyes, but I kept telling her how much I loved her until they took her away from me at the hospital." "Why did you do that?" Jane asked. "I needed to be sure that the last thing she heard was me telling her how much I loved her," I said.

There's no but. You're right. It's just a reminder that war favors the rich. The ones who can leave, do. The ones who can't, suffer.