John Scalzi

“I thought I saw him once, but it turned out to be a yeti”

“Is it a shark made of ice?" Hanoen asked. "Or a shark that lives in ice?”

“The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another—it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time.”

“For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.”

“The Scooby gang doesn’t travel because they are looking for crimes to solve. They travel because they’re one step ahead of the deprogrammers. Somehow, Fred’s got them all snookered. It probably has something to do with the Scooby Snacks.”

“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'm not insane, sir. I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.”

“I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.Visiting Kathy's grave was the less dramatic of the two.”

“When you're a teenager and you're in love, it's obvious to everyone but you and the person you're in love with.”

“In other words, crew deaths are a feature, not a bug," Cassaway said, dryly.”

“Guns don’t kill people. The aliens behind the triggers do.”

“This is the last time I would ever visit the cemetery or my wife's grave, but I didn't want to expend too much effort in trying to remember it. As I said, this is the place where she's never been anything but dead. There's not much value in remembering that.”

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

“Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.”

“It’s a hell of a thing to say good-bye to your whole life.”

“Christ on a Popsicle stick.”

“God damn it," Thomas said as he sat down at the table, carrying a tray so piled with food that it was a miracle he could even lift it. "Aren't we all just too good-looking for words.”

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

“In general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there’s not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a).”

“Don’t discount that part of who he was just because you didn’t know it. None of us are all of who we are to any one person.”

“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.”

“Get off my planet, you son of a bitch.”

“Now, you may think that this is some sort of generalized hatred that I will carry for the lot of you. Let me assure you that this is not the case. Each of you will fail, but you will fail in your own unique way, and therefore I will dislike each of you on an individual basis.”

“I didn't mind getting old when I was young. It's the being old now that's getting to me.”

“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.”

“Fear is a scavenger who feeds on the future; on what may be and what is possible, extending down the line of our lives.”

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

“I do not mind when you tell me what you want and put that first instead of last.”

“You would rather face a life without me than to have me choose a life I would not choose for myself.”

“There's a difference between the fact that the universe is inherently unfair on a cosmic level, and the fact that life is unfair because people are actively making it so.”

“The story of how I left Huckleberry begins -- as do all worthy stories -- with a goat”

“I am not responsible for actions of the imaginary version of me you have inside your head.”

“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.”

“I failed angst in high school. They let me graduate anyway.”

“Yes, Hart, I went commando to a diplomatic function,” Harry said, and then motioned to his body. “And now, as you can see, I’m going Spartan so a midget can whack me with a stick.” He bent and picked up his Bongka. “Honestly, Hart. Help me out here. Focus a little.”

“If you want me to treat your ideas with more respect, get some better ideas.”

“The man reached into his coat and pulled out a wallet containing an ID card. "Agent Dwight, FBI. Miss Baker, I need you to come with me. You're in danger here.""In danger?" Robin said. "In danger from what?""Not from what. From who," Agent Dwight said, and glanced over at Creek. "You're in danger from him. He's going to kill you, Miss Baker. At least he is going to try."Robin turned to Creek. "You bastard," she said. "You never said anything about killing me when we made the date."”

“Here's a quick rule of thumb: Don't annoy science fiction writers. These are people who destroy entire planets before lunch. Think of what they'll do to you.”