Top 300 John Scalzi Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Listen to me or don’t. But if you don’t, you’ll be dead. And then where will you be? Dead, that’s where.”

— John Scalzi

152. “When you control communication, you can hide anything you want.”

— John Scalzi

153. “Well, that’s science fiction television for you, though,” Abnett said. “Someone’s got to be the red shirt.”

— John Scalzi

154. “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

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

— John Scalzi

156. “Again I ask permission to be blunt.” “Ambassador Abumwe, at this point I cannot imagine you being otherwise.”

— John Scalzi

157. “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

158. “Yes, death by away team. Very effective on this ship,” Jenkins said.”

— John Scalzi

159. “I don’t have a problem with treason,” I said. “I can stop anytime.” I.”

— John Scalzi

160. “But everyone knows you need fireworks to make independence official.”

— John Scalzi

161. “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

162. “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

163. “Weren’t we having a mutiny?”

— John Scalzi

164. “Even without the Interdependency, being interdependent was the best way for humanity to survive.”

— John Scalzi

165. “One of Harvey’s guiding lights in terms of strategies was simplicity; all things being equal, Harvey preferred the course of action that let him get into the middle of things and then just buckle down.”

— John Scalzi

166. “Wes is Wes,” Alastair said. “One in every family. I love him, but I think of him as a sarcastic pet.”

— John Scalzi

167. “His progress was more lateral than forward.”

— John Scalzi

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

— John Scalzi

169. “Who are you and what medications aren’t you taking?”

— John Scalzi

170. “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

171. “Well, ‘explode’ maybe isn’t the most accurate term. What actually happens is much more interesting.”

— John Scalzi

172. “While the elite of the Interdependency were making their plans to abandon the common people to their fate, the common people of the Interdependency were beginning to come to grips with what, exactly, that fate actually was.”

— John Scalzi

173. “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

174. “What’s messed up here isn’t that this guy thinks we’re on a television show. What’s messed up here is that as far as I can tell, at this point, it’s the most rational explanation for what’s going on.”

— John Scalzi

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

— John Scalzi

176. “It takes a certain kind of dog to willingly demote himself from alpha dog, and that dog was Carl. Holloway would have to speak to him about it, for what little good it would do, Carl being a dog and all.”

— John Scalzi

177. “It worked because on a social level, apparently enough people wanted it to, and because at the heart of it, billions of humans living in fragile habitats prone to mechanical and environmental breakdowns and degradation, and with limited natural resources, were better off relying on each other than trying to go it alone. Even without the Interdependency, being interdependent was the best way for humanity to survive.”

— John Scalzi

178. “It’s war, you jackasses,” Keyes snapped. “I’m sorry it’s not terribly convenient or comfortable for you.”

— John Scalzi

179. “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

180. “I’m sorry,” the groundskeeper said. “Usually the kharhn we feed to the kingsflower are already dead. I never get to see anything live fed to it. This is exciting for me.”

— John Scalzi

181. “Sometimes in life you’re going to win and sometimes you’re going to lose. But just because you lose doesn’t mean the other guy needs to win.”

— John Scalzi

182. “Because this is what I learned about myself that first day: My body is my body. I don’t want anyone else in it. I don’t want someone else controlling it, or trying to. It’s my own little space in the world and the only space I have. And to have someone else in it, doing anything to it, sends me into a panic.”

— John Scalzi

183. “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

184. “Mom, I remember Lizzie,” Hart said. “She’s really not my type.” “She has a brother,” Wes said, from his lounge. “He’s not my type, either,” Hart said.”

— John Scalzi

185. “Really really really difficult,” Tony allowed. “But theoretically possible because, hey, it’s a quantum physics universe.”

— John Scalzi

186. “Lovely,” Wilson said, looking at the display. “And by ‘lovely,’ I mean ‘Oh, crap.”

— John Scalzi

187. “The short version was death, disease, despots and destruction. The longer version had kept him up wondering what the hell was wrong with people.”

— John Scalzi

188. “When I was a kid I watched a documentary about the movie Planet of the Apes. The first one, with Charlton Heston. They were talking about how they would make up all the extras as various types of apes, like chimps and gorillas and orangutans, and then the extras would go to lunch and they would segregate. All the people made up like gorillas would sit with other gorillas, all the chimps would sit with chimps.”

— John Scalzi

189. “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

190. “General Gau had thanked for her candor in this as in all other things and then went ahead and did it anyway.”

— John Scalzi

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

— John Scalzi

192. “To everyone who thinks writing a sequel should be easy because you’ve already created the universe: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha! Heh. No.”

— John Scalzi

193. “Fear enters the room and sits down in a chair and with a polite smile asks to open negotiations.”

— John Scalzi

194. “Cardenia gawked at Rachela I. “You’re unbelievable.” “I worked in marketing,” Rachela I said. “Before I was a prophet. After, too, but we didn’t call it that after that point.”

— John Scalzi

195. “For two years, all you have to do is go where they tell you, stay behind your rifle, and kill and not be killed. It’s simple, but simple isn’t the same as easy.”

— John Scalzi

196. “Oh, God,” I said. “Thank you so very much for the mental image of Dad as a teenage sack of hormones. That’s the sort of image that takes therapy to get rid of.”

— John Scalzi

197. “I worked in marketing,” Rachela I said. “Before I was a prophet. After, too, but we didn’t call it that after that point.”

— John Scalzi

198. “A newspaper publisher. In the late 1800s the United States and Spain were warming up for a war over Cuba, and Hearst sent an illustrator to Cuba to make pictures of the event. When the illustrator got there, he sent a telegram to Hearst saying that as far as he could see, there was no war coming and that he was going home. Hearst sent back that he should stay and said, ‘You furnish the pictures, and I will furnish the war.’ And he did.”

— John Scalzi

199. “The diagnostic said there was nothing wrong with the threep, which may have meant there was something wrong with the diagnostic.”

— John Scalzi

200. “There’s nothing like sharing menarche with a billion hermaphrodites. I think it was everyone’s first time.”

— John Scalzi