John Scalzi > Quotes

“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.”
― John Scalzi

“1. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the things they read (or watch, or listen to, or taste, or whatever). They’re also entitled to express them online.

2. Sometimes those opinions will be ones you don’t like.

3. Sometimes those opinions won’t be very nice.

4. The people expressing those may be (but are not always) assholes.

5. However, if your solution to this “problem” is to vex, annoy, threaten or harrass them, you are almost certainly a bigger asshole.

6. You may also be twelve.

7. You are not responsible for anyone else’s actions or karma, but you are responsible for your own.

8. So leave them alone and go about your own life."

[Bad Reviews: I Can Handle Them, and So Should You (Blog post, July 17, 2012)]”
― John Scalzi

“If you want me to treat your ideas with more respect, get some better ideas.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded

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

“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.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“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).”
― John Scalzi

“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.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“I'm not insane, sir. I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“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.”
― John Scalzi

“What is it like when you lose someone you love?" Jane asked.
"You die, too. And you wait around for your body to catch up.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“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.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“We've already established whoever is writing us is an asshole.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“Do not mourn me, friends
I fall as a shooting star
Into the next life”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“I failed angst in high school. They let me graduate anyway.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded

“I don't care whether I really exist or don't, whether I'm real or fictional. What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“Making people change because you can’t deal with who they are isn’t how it’s supposed to be done. What needs to be done is for people to pull their heads out of their asses. You say ‘cure.’ I hear ‘you’re not human enough.”
― John Scalzi, Lock In

“You would rather face a life without me than to have me choose a life I would not choose for myself.”
― John Scalzi, The Sagan Diary

“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.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“Get off my planet, you son of a bitch.”
― John Scalzi, Fuzzy Nation

“If your flirting strategy is indistinguishable from harassment, it's not everyone else that's the problem.”
― John Scalzi

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

“The story of how I left Huckleberry begins -- as do all worthy stories -- with a goat”
― John Scalzi, The Last Colony

“If your social consciousness seems stuck in 1975, 2014 is gonna be a rough ride.”
― John Scalzi

“Sooner or later the Narrative will come for each of us.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

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

“The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”
― John Scalzi

“Who are you and what medications aren't you taking?" Finn said.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“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.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“I tried being a vegan for a while, but I couldn’t live without cheese.” “They have vegan cheese.” “No, they don’t. They have shredded orange and white sadness that mocks cheese and everything it stands for.”
― John Scalzi, The Kaiju Preservation Society