Quotes from John Scalzi

When you lose someone you love, you die too, and you wait around for your body to catch up.

What we need to do, as writers, is find out where our market is and adapt to it. I'm not saying that you follow every trend slavishly, but what you see is that, if there is a sea-change in the way that things are being done, then you account for it.

I don't care whether I really exist or don't, whether I'm real or fictional. What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate.

I will not let my sales figures dictate what I say on the blog, because the blog is what I want to say.

I both love and am terrified by Greg Van Eekhout's vision of Los Angeles. I already want to go back.

I grew up in southern California in the '80s. Yes, I am a walking cliche.

I think that what I do, in terms of how I craft my words rhetorically, is fairly simple stuff. I don't mean that to denigrate myself. I mean that in the sense of, when I write, the person that I keep in mind is my mother-in-law.

Personally speaking, when everything is boiled down to the marrow, I think the reason Reddit tolerates the creepy forums has to do with money more than anything else.

GamerGate is about harassing, threatening and silencing women. Started that way, has been that way all along. Dont pretend otherwise.

When I'm writing a novel or doing other serious writing work, I do it on a schedule that dictates writing either 2,000 words a day or writing until noon. After I hit whichever mark comes first, then I can give my attention to everything else I have to do.

I find it difficult to believe that Redditors don't understand that anonymity online is merely a facade; indeed, it's probably one of the reasons that revealing the identity of pseudonymous Redditors is looked on as such a huge betrayal.

Reddit is not a public utility or a public square; it's a privately owned space on the Internet.

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.

But define 'completely ridiculous shit,' Duvall said. Does space travel count? Contact with alien races? Does quantum physics count? Because I don't understand that crap at all. As far as I'm concerned, quantum physics could have been written by a hack.

I despise you and I love you, you who are my damnation and salvation both.

You do what you have to do to give people closure; it makes them feel better and it doesn't cost you much to do it. I'd rather apologize for something I didn't really care about, and leave someone on Earth wishing me well, than to be stubborn and have that someone hoping that some alien would slurp out my brains. Call it karmic insurance.

I didn't choose the Nerd Life. The Nerd Life chose me. Awkwardly and without making eye contact.

There has never been a military in the entire history of the human race that has gone to war equipped with more than the least that it needs to fight its enemy. War is expensive. It costs money and it costs lives and no civilization has an infinite amount of either. So when you fight, you conserve. You use and equip only as much as you have to, never more.

I tried being a vegan for a while, but I couldn't live without cheese." "They have vegan cheese." "No, they don't. They have shredded orange and white sadness that mocks cheese and everything it stands for.

You threw him into space?" "Yup." "And he didn't die?" "We only threw him out a little bit." Marce

I'm continually confronted with the human tendency to ignore or deny facts until the last possible instant. And then for several days after that, too." Attavio

I'll say it: I want to see an ugly woman as a spokeswoman for a women's network. Ugly men are out there all the time – look at Larry King, for God's sake. He looks like someone's talking underwear. Why not give America a spokeswoman who ain't much to look at but is competent as Hell? If accomplishments actually count for women, this ought to be a no-brainer.

Confidence isn't about knowing you're right. Confidence is about knowing you can make it right.

It's hard to sell the official story to people who can see things for themselves.