Quotes from Joe Haldeman

[Spielberg and I] had a disagreement over what God was....He thought God was Stephen Spielberg, but that thought had never occurred to me.

I suspect that war will become obsolete only when something worse supercedes it.

One hopes that they'll never be able to use mind control weapons, because we're all done for if that happens. I don't want military people, or political people, to have that type of power over those of us who just get by from day to day.

Saul's vitals were not human, but familiar:he never told me he was from another world:I never told him I was from his future.

Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.

The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate. Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me?

Reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.

Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.

There's no such thing as writing about the future. The future hasn't happened yet.

Doctors don't seem to realize that most of us are perfectly content not having to visualize ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop.

Heaven was a lovely, unspoiled Earth-like world; what Earth might have been like if men had treated her with compassion instead of lust.

Science fiction as a genre has the benefit of being able to act as parable, to set up a story at a remove so you can make a real-world point without people throwing up a wall in front of it.

So here we were, fifty men and fifty women, with IQs over 150 and bodies of unusual health and strength, slogging elitely through the mud and slush of central Missouri, reflecting on the usefulness of our skill in building bridges on worlds where the only fluid is an occasional standing pool of liquid helium.

But love, he said, love was a fragile blossom; love was a delicate crystal; love was an unstable reaction with a half-life of about eight months. Bullshit, I said, and accused him of wearing cultural blinders; thirty centuries of prewar society taught that love was one thing that could last to the grave and even beyond and if he had been born instead of hatched he would know that without being told!

He's asleep in the harbor, disguised as dog shit.

Bad books on writing tell you to 'write what you know', a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.

People had written about that, warfare based on attrition of wealth rather than loss of life. But it's always been easier to make new lives than new wealth.

In the few moments I lay awake after finally lying down, the thought came to me that the next time I closed my eyes could well be the last. And partly because of the drug hangover, mostly because of the past day's horrors, I found that I really didn't give a shit.

Sitting here in a bar with an asexual cyborg who is probably the only other normal person on the whole goddamned planet.

I never found anybody else and I don't want anybody else. I don't care whether you're ninety years old or thirty. If I can't be your lover, I'll be your nurse.

I'm not quite Machiavellian enough to set him up, but if he strays too close to the edge I might give him a nudge.

Politicians cover their mistakes with money; cooks cover their mistakes with mayonnaise; doctors cover theirs with dirt.

Anyone who sees clearly sees chaos everywhere. Art is a way of temporarily setting order to confusion. Temporary and incomplete; that's why we never run out of new art. Anyone who comes to the tools of art without that sense of confusion is an invader.

Saul's vitals were not human, but familiar: he never told me he was from another world: I never told him I was from his future.