John Scalzi Quotes

Jared, allow me to share with you my philosophy of human beings. It can be summed up in four words: I like good people.

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.
You can’t stop aging. Gene therapies and replacement organs and plastic surgery give it a good fight. But it catches up with you anyway. Get a new lung, and your heart blows a valve. Get a new heart, and your liver swells up to the size of an inflatable kiddie pool. Change out your liver, a stroke gives you a whack. That’s aging’s trump card; they still can’t replace brains.

In this universe, experience counts.

When power is within reach, few will wait patiently for it.

I have no idea what that means, Nick," Paulson said. "Talk normal human to me.

“Speaking of secrets, how are your negotiations with the Obin going?”
Both Mattson and Robbins looked at Szilard warily. “There are no negotiations with the Obin,” Robbins said.
“Of course not,” Szilard said. “You’re not negotiating with the Obin to continue Boutin’s consciousness program for them. And the Obin are not negotiating with us to knock down whichever of the Rraey or Eneshans is still left standing after their upcoming little war. No one’s negotiating with anyone about anything. And how are these non-negotiations not going?”
Robbins looked at Mattson, who nodded. “They’re not going surprisingly well,” Robbins said. “We probably won’t reach an agreement in the next couple of days.”
“How not wonderful,” Szilard said.

What’s the point of being in charge if you can’t indulge in pointless favoritism.

She was temptable—which, if you believe in an all-powerful God, means God intentionally put temptation into Eve. Which seems like a dirty trick, if you ask me.

When you’re a kid, a rural, agriculturally-based colony town is a lot of fun to grow up in. It’s life on a farm, with goats and chickens and fields of wheat and sorghum, harvest celebrations and winter festivals. There’s not an eight- or nine-year-old kid who’s been invented who doesn’t find all of that unspeakably fun. But then you become a teenager and you start thinking about everything you might possibly want to do with your life, and you look at the options available to you. And then all farms, goats and chickens—and all the same people you’ve known all your life and will know all your life—begin to look a little less than optimal for a total life experience. It’s all the same, of course. That’s the point. It’s you who’s changed.

You are sufficiently like me to officially be interesting.

The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”

He’s almost certainly planned for the contingency of being caught. He’s rich and he’s got more lawyers than some countries have people.

Sometimes I don’t know if my life is complicated, or if it’s that I just think too much about things.

I don't appreciate the suggestion that I'm acting irrationally," he said.
"Then don't act irrationally," Jane said, "because there will be consequences.

“I didn’t say that,” Szilard said, in a tone that implied that perhaps he had.