Quotes from John Scalzi

Praise is always a good thing, especially in a crisis.

Trust your weapon, it is almost certainly smarter than you are. Remember this and you may yet live.

After our negotiations were completed, the dome would be imploded and launched toward the nearest black hole, so that none of its atoms would ever contaminate this particular universe again. I thought that last part was overkill.

He was determined to be the most touristy tourist who had ever touristed

Okay, that's intensely interesting, Duvall said. So you're a priest of the Forshan religion? Which schism? The leftward schism, and no, not a priest. Couldn't handle the celibacy? Leftward priests aren't required to be celibate, Dahl said, but considering I was the only human at the seminary, I had celibacy thrust upon me, if you will. Some people wouldn't let that stop them, Duvall said. You haven't seen a Forshan seminary student up close, Dahl said. Also, I don't swing xeno.

Look," he said. "We'd like you to return the salary." "Oh, is that all?" I said. "Heck. That's easy. The answer is no." "What?" "No." "No?" "What part of that two-letter word don't you understand, Brad?" I asked. "Was it the vowel that threw you, or the consonant ?

The recruiting office was a small storefront in a nondescript strip mall; there was a state liquor authority store on one side of it and a tattoo parlor on the other. Depending on what order you went into each, you could wake up the next morning in some serious trouble.

Dreher laments we now live in a "post-Christian" America, but he's wrong. The Americans who are standing with their loved ones and neighbors are in fact doing exactly what Jesus asked them to do, when he said that we should love each other as we love ourselves. It's possible, however, that we live in a post-accepting-bigotry-cloaking-itself-in-the-raiments-of-Christ America. And, you know. I can live in that America just fine.

Lies do not in themselves lead to poor outcomes, nor does truth in every circumstance lead to good ones. As with so many things, context matters.

It was a very cozy meeting. In addition to my role as visitor liaison, I was also, once again, supervising snacks.

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.

For two years, all you have to do is go where they tell you, stay behind your rifle, and kill and not be killed. It's simple, but simple isn't the same as easy.

You seem tense," Kahurangi said to them. "Of course I'm tense," Niamh snapped back. "We have a stupid plan." "You're just saying this because it's my plan." "I'm not just saying it because it's your plan, and also, yes.

It's because I remind them they're not God," I said. "And that if there is one, I'm closer to Him than they are.

You have to eliminate the low-hanging targets first, on the off chance you were dealing with morons.

Well, life is like that sometimes, Isabel said. We learn things too late, and then we don't get to use them.

You just know this is going to be bad, Susan said. —but when I went to college, Harry continued, throwing a piece of bread at Susan, if your roommate died, you were usually allowed to skip your finals for that semester. You know, because of the trauma. And oddly enough, your roommate got to skip them, too, Susan said. For much the same reason.

There is a moment of surface tension when a knife blade presents its demand and the flesh honors it. An instant of pressure before the puncture, the rip before the slide, a small eternity easy to miss but impossible to ignore if you've felt it before. I lived in that moment a great while for the small sliver of time it was there.

I glared at the man. You know, Dr. Russell, most doctors would have found a more tactful way to break the news. I'm sorry, Mr. Perry, Dr. Russell said. I don't want to seem unconcerned. But it's really not a problem. Even on Earth, testicular cancer is easily treatable, particularly in the early stages, which is the case here. At the very worst, you'd lose the testicle, but that's not a significant setback. Unless you happen to own the testicle, I growled.

And so, for coolness under pressure, for giving the rest of the away team the time it needed to get Ion safely back to the helicopter, and for having the absolute nerve to ignore Riddu Tagaq, I am proud and happy to award Jamie Gray the Ancient and Sacred Order of Holy Shit Jamie Just Shot That Parasite Straight in the Mouth with a Canister Launcher.

Hide' isn't a word we like to use, Cassaway said. 'Perform alternative tasks' is the preferred term.

The supply transport's on autopilot most of the way down anyway. I'm just on board so that if it crashes, they can say someone died.

The last Gold Team geologist decided to retire after we basically had to reattach a limb. For a second time." "Oh." "Well, that's not completely accurate. It wasn't the same limb twice. They were different limbs.

Destiny gets compressed, you know, into just that small fraction of a second you have right in front of you at any one time. And there's nothing romantic about keeping your head down to avoid getting shot, or trying to save a friend who's been injured, or coming face to face with a creature who is as smart and mean and as terrified of dying as you are, and who wants to make sure that if someone is left on the ground there, it's you and not it.