Top 300 John Scalzi Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Well, I’m sorry you might possibly be out a bit of money, Jack,” Isabel said. “Jesus, Isabel,” Holloway said. He opened the door. “A bit of money? Try at least a couple billion credits. That’s billion, with a b. Saying that’s a bit of money is like saying a forest fire is a nice way to roast some marshmallows.”

— John Scalzi

102. “Are we there yet?” I asked Joshua. “No,” Joshua said. “Are we there yet?” I said. “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “Yes,” Joshua said. “Stop the car.”

— John Scalzi

103. “You threw him into space?” “Yup.” “And he didn’t die?” “We only threw him out a little bit.” Marce.”

— John Scalzi

104. “I have no idea, Jim,” Lowen said. “I’m a doctor, not a private investigator.”

— John Scalzi

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

— John Scalzi

106. “Q’eeng had just attempted in the third dialect the traditional rightward schism greeting of “I offer you the bread of life,” but his phrasing and accent had transmuted the statement into “Let us violate cakes together.”

— John Scalzi

107. “It’s a cat,” I said. “If Donut wants to spend time with you he’ll show up in your room and sit on your important things.”

— John Scalzi

108. “Not that I expected him to know; he didn’t exactly have the “programmer” look to him, if you know what I mean. He’d be the programmer’s boss. The one they hated. The one who made them work on holidays.”

— John Scalzi

109. “You can be happy anywhere, if you have the right point of view. And the ability to ignore the smell of an entire planet.”

— John Scalzi

110. “You’re all so busy tending to your own personal tree that you don’t look around to see that the forest is on fire.”

— John Scalzi

111. “Anyone can be a prophet. You just have to say that what you’re talking about is a reflection of God. Or of the gods. Or of some divine spirit. However you want to put it. Whether those things come true isn’t one way or another about it.”

— John Scalzi

112. “The answer to that is complicated.” “Give me the short version.” “The short version is ‘Yes, but.’ The slightly longer version is ‘No, and.’ Which version would you like?”

— John Scalzi

113. “The half-life between story of the century and not even the story of the day is quicker than you would ever guess.”

— John Scalzi

114. “This is what happens when the Narrative takes over. Things quit making sense. The laws of physics take a coffee break. People stop thinking logically and start thinking dramatically.”

— John Scalzi

115. “I’m trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. A nice thing to wonder about when you’re thirty.”

— John Scalzi

116. “Imagine a migraine, on top of a hangover, while sitting in a kindergarten of thirty screaming children, who are all taking turns stabbing you in the eye with an ice pick.”

— John Scalzi

117. “The Yherajk were a less immediate but infinitely more complicated problem – alien globs who want to befriend a humanity that, if asked, would probably prefer to be befriended by something with an endoskeleton.”

— John Scalzi

118. “A library is not information; it is a means of preserving information. In every case, before memory or information can be stored, someone must decide what must be stored. Someone must choose. Someone must curate.”

— John Scalzi

119. “You do what you have to do to give people closure; it makes them feel better and it doesn’t cost you much to do it. I’d rather apologize for something I didn’t really care about, and leave someone on Earth wishing me well, than to be stubborn and have that someone hoping that some alien would slurp out my brains. Call it karmic insurance.”

— John Scalzi

120. “If you’re the best that the Earth has got to offer, it’s time we bend over and get a tentacle right up the ass.”

— John Scalzi

121. “Hide’ isn’t a word we like to use,” Cassaway said. “‘Perform alternative tasks’ is the preferred term.”

— John Scalzi

122. “Teenagers can be idiotic and stupid, but teenagers also model their behavior from the signals they get from adults.”

— John Scalzi

123. “I’m a seething cauldron of disconnected rage on the inside, Lieutenant.” “Ah, repression,” Keyes said. “Excellent. Try to avoid taking a potshot at me when you finally blow, please.” “I can’t promise anything, sir,” Alan said.”

— John Scalzi

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

— John Scalzi

125. “This brings me back to my question about my karma,” Wilson said. “You probably set kittens on fire,” Schmidt said. “And the rest of us were probably there with you, with skewers.”

— John Scalzi

126. “What was your job back on Earth? I’ve always been curious. I taught eighth-grade math in Tallahassee. Huh, I said. That’s not what I expected. Are you kidding? Powell said back. You try teaching algebra to a bunch of little shitheads for thirty-eight years straight. The way I figure it I’ve got about another decade before my rage from that gets entirely burned up.”

— John Scalzi

127. “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.”

— John Scalzi

128. “Moeller also immediately discounted insults about competence, as the incompetent never question their competence about anything.”

— John Scalzi

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

— John Scalzi

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130. “When a lie has negative consequences, people dislike it. But otherwise? They move on, and eventually the lie as a lie is forgotten, or in this case, codified as the foundation of religious practice and buffed and sanded into something prettier and more congenial.”

— John Scalzi

131. “Realborn go for years without the slightest clue what they’re going to do with themselves. From what I understand, some of them never actually figure it out. They just walk through life in a daze and then fall into their graves at the end of it.”

— John Scalzi

132. “Are we agreed that the goal here is survival, not a win?”

— John Scalzi

133. “I live the life I live, and it’s the only life I have. No one else is out there in the universe living my alternate lives, and even if they were, I wouldn’t be worrying about them because I have my life to live here, now.”

— John Scalzi

134. “Well, I miss my wife, you know,” I said. “But I also miss the feeling of, I don’t know, comfort. The sense you’re where you’re supposed to be, with someone you’re supposed to be with.”

— John Scalzi

135. “Praise is always a good thing, especially in a crisis.”

— John Scalzi

136. “But we get to live as long as we’re useful. And that is a rare privilege.”

— John Scalzi

137. “Hickory clicked something to Dickory in their native tongue; Dickory clicked back. Hickory responded, and Dickory replied, it seemed a bit forcefully. And then, God help me, Hickory actually sighed.”

— John Scalzi

138. “I don’t know that it will matter even then,” Cardenia said. “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.”

— John Scalzi

139. “I have the power to call you here. As I have the power to condemn you to death. I hope we understand each other.”

— John Scalzi

140. “The rest of the rebels were recruited from the ranks of the young and excitable and had rather more enthusiasm than skill.”

— John Scalzi

141. “The Jenna Situation, as you recalled it now, had been fraught with fraughtiness.”

— John Scalzi

142. “I love her more than I actually express in words – an irony for a writer – and am every day genuinely amazed I get to spend my life with her.”

— John Scalzi

143. “How did you get here, anyway?” “It’s classified.” “I’m close enough to stab you with a fork.”

— John Scalzi

144. “I thought this was a matter of some urgency, Harry.” “It is,” I said. “But I fell from the sky today. I could use a couple of waffles.”

— John Scalzi

145. “Look,” I said. “Something that needs your attention. Over there. Away from here.”

— John Scalzi

146. “At least one tribe, the Geln, strongly opposed attacking the Colonial Union, since humans were reasonably strong, distressingly tenacious and not especially principled when they felt threatened.”

— John Scalzi

147. “How much did you love her?” Jane asked. “Your wife. Kathy. When people are married for a long time, maybe they stay together out of habit.” “Sometimes they do,” I said. “But I loved her very much. All the time we were married. I love her now.”

— John Scalzi

148. “Is it painful?” the groundskeeper asked. “I am asking for science.”

— John Scalzi

149. “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. That’s something I can work on. It’s what I’m working on now.”

— John Scalzi

150. “There was general agreement that Brahe was correct, until Gell-Man taught the squad to swear in Arabic.”

— John Scalzi