Quotes from John Scalzi

Filled with existential ennui about your place in the universe? Get over yourself. Yes, you're an inconsequential worm in the grand scope of history. But you're an inconsequential worm who makes shit up for a living, which means that you don't have to lift heavy boxes or ask people if they want fries with that. Grow up and get back to work.

Never anger a sci-fi writer. These people destroy entire planets over lunch. Imagine what they'll do to you.

It's not an effective protest if it's not pissing people off.

It's the twenty-first century; no one goes by Betsy anymore," Tom said. "But even if they did, there's usually context. If you're saying, 'Betsy has the results from the lab,' it's probably the human. If it's 'Betsy just got pissed off and burned down twenty thousand acres of jungle,' it's probably the kaiju.

I have always found that there's an inverse relationship between the number of people in a room and the amount of useful work that can be done.

Attempting to use a biological agent against your enemy while avoiding its effects on you is like trying to use a grenade by holding onto it and hoping all the shrapnel flies in the direction of the person you want to kill.

Q'eeng had just attempted in the third dialect the traditional rightward schism greeting of "I offer you the bread of life," but his phrasing and accent had transmuted the statement into "Let us violate cakes together.

Is it good? It ain't Shakespeare, but then, Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus , so you tell me.

It was stupidly perfect how all my problems were suddenly solved with the strategic application of money.

Every creature has a survival instinct. It looks like fear but it's not the same thing. Fear isn't the desire to avoid death or pain. Fear is rooted in the knowledge that what you recognize as yourself can cease to exist. Fear is existential.

My characters were...rebelling against something...My own bad writing. I wouldn't do for my characters what they needed for me to do - be courageous enough in my writing to make them interesting.

That thing looks like H. P. Lovecraft's panic attack.

Well, I miss my wife, you know, I said. But I also miss the feeling of, I don't know, comfort. The sense you're where you're supposed to be, with someone you're supposed to be with.

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." "And primed to believe the lie.

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

If you're the best that the Earth has got to offer, it's time we bend over and get a tentacle right up the ass.

When you're a kid all you want to do is be somewhere else.

What's the RLH protocol?" I asked. "It means run like hell

After another few days, I noticed I became annoyed whenever I would actually have to ask Asshole for something. How quickly the creepy becomes commonplace.

Fear sits and smiles and is predatory, immobile and silent and serene; an observer who conserves his energy and is content to wait.

Well, that's science fiction television for you, though, Abnett said. Someone's got to be the red shirt.

A church is an institution separate from the religion it serves. It's filled with people. And you know how people are.

I didn't mind getting old when I was young, either," I said. "It's the being old now that's getting to me.

Occam's razor theory of combat: The simplest way of kicking someone's ass was usually the correct one.