Quotes from John Scalzi

I looked at Fowler, who had had a bullet applied directly to her forehead.

To be fair, the House of Lagos let loose a virus that wiped out a staple crop." "To be fair, you can go fuck yourself because we had nothing to do with that and you know it." "I've missed you, Kiva. You and your marvelous way with the word 'fuck.'" "No you haven't, but thank you anyway." Ghreni

She had the expression of the cat who ate the canary and then threw it up in her owner's favorite shoes.

Fear enters the room and sits down in a chair and with a polite smile asks to open negotiations.

I lift things.

The archbishop arrived at the lectern, dressed in archbishopric finery, or so Kiva supposed, since she didn't actually attend church with any regularity, although she had once had sex in a cathedral, which was great, if you like cold and echoey, which Kiva discovered she didn't so much.

The next day, I got shot in the head. Before that happened, though, I fell out of my bunk. The falling out of the bunk was not the important part.

You need to explain this to me like I'm an idiot," I said. "Because clearly I am.

Your friend Leon certainly didn't join to be in the military - he can't stand the people we will protect. People join because they're not ready to die and they don't want to be old. They join because life on Earth isn't interesting past a certain age. Or they join to see someplace new before they die. That's why I joined, you know. I'm not joining to fight or be young again. I just want to see what it's like to be somewhere else .

and Vice President Tony Su. Su's presence was unusual. The president had reverted to the formerly common practice of giving the Vice President absolutely nothing of any importance to do. Su spent most of his time vising elementary schools and working on his putting.

sequestered in a smelly stateroom on a rusting ship filled with kidney-stabbing miscreants

So if he dies during the jump, it'll be my fault," Wilson said. "If he dies during the jump, I would suggest it would be politic for you to follow him

Years working at a newspaper. You learn to write fast and reasonably good and in a manner which does not require substantial editing. Or your editors and copyeditors stab you to death and hang your corpse in the newsroom as a warning to the other staff writers.

Would you like some help with your duct work, sir?" Dahl asked. "Please," Kerensky said. *

The crowd was pushed back despite their best efforts. Some of them flung bottles and other objects toward the funnels and were surprised when they shifted course right back at them. Apparently you don't have to understand physics to protest.

she will find a way to make the rest of your natural existence one of unceasing woe and misery.

I'm not a good man, Mark," Holloway said. "But I was the right man. And for this, that was enough.

You improvised." "Yes. The one advantage we had, which is a thing I brought to the enterprise, was the understanding that the plan was not the goal. The goal was the goal, and we were going to get it however we could. And if it meant changing our plans, sometimes in the middle of executing them, then we would.

Creativity eventually comes from the need not to have ourselves or other people eaten by leopards.

Thought I'd ask," I said. "It was worth a shot." "Not really

So all of it—local and archived data—went up with the lab building." Vann glanced over to me with an expression that I suspect meant these people were sloppy.

I don't appreciate the suggestion that I'm acting irrationally," he said. "Then don't act irrationally

I had, bluntly, the worst fucking headache I had ever had in my life. I'm trying to think of the best way to describe it. Try this. Imagine a migraine, on top of a hangover, while sitting in a kindergarten of thirty screaming children, who are all taking turns stabbing you in the eye with an ice pick. Times six. That was the good part of my headache.

In one corner, a group of men were kneeling on a carpeted area of the bay and praying.