Top 40 Marko Kloos Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “In a way, I am an angel of death as well, but the power I serve is even more vengeful and merciless than the god of Israel. I’m the one who marks the doorposts in the night, and we pass over none.”

— Marko Kloos

2. “Is Russian artillery,” he says. “Mostly hits right target. Mostly.”

— Marko Kloos

3. “Here we are, on the losing end of an interstellar war, with our world slowly falling apart around us, and I’m excited about going to see my girlfriend for a day or two. We may have gone from oar-powered galleys to half-kilometer starships in the span of two thousand years, but some things about humanity seem to be a universal constant, no matter the era.”

— Marko Kloos

4. “Combative is her default setting.”

— Marko Kloos

5. “Action beats reaction most of the time.”

— Marko Kloos

6. “You can choose to follow orders without question, or you can choose to follow the law. Keep in mind that without the law, we’re not a military, just an armed gang that dresses alike.”

— Marko Kloos

7. “First time I looked at Earth from orbit, it damn near blew my mind. The scale of it, you know? And it looked so peaceful. You realize just how stupid it all is. Us, the SRA, the welfare rats, trying to kill each other, when we’re all just a bunch of ants hurtling through space on this little piece of rock and water.”

— Marko Kloos

8. “Treaties are words on a page, Solveig. They’re only worth anything if you have the ability to enforce them.”

— Marko Kloos

9. “Welcome to the end of the species,” I say. “At least we have ringside seats.”

— Marko Kloos

10. “I love our unhurried lovemaking, enjoying the act without having to worry about unwelcome visitors knocking on the hatch or overhead announcements in the hallway outside interrupting us.”

— Marko Kloos

11. “Is no such thing as overkill,” Dmitry replies. “Anything worth breaking is worth breaking a lot.”

— Marko Kloos

12. “We can roll over and give up, I think. Or we can keep forging on and see what happens. And maybe it turns out that we were wrong about the odds after all.”

— Marko Kloos

13. “You’ve been in long enough, Grayson. Never assume malice if you can explain it with lack of planning.”

— Marko Kloos

14. “If one of you sons of bitches gets killed for lack of shooting back because you ran out of ammo, I will personally violate your carcass. Understood?” “Yes, Master Sergeant,” the enlisted grunts shout back. I grin behind the shield of my visor. Nobody does motivational premission pep talks better than Sergeant Fallon. I.”

— Marko Kloos

15. “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,” he says. “Where did you get that?” I ask. “Oh, an old novel that I like. Orcs and elves and high adventure, that sort of thing.”

— Marko Kloos

16. “No more generational feuds, no more ancient grudges, no more pointless revenge carried out against people who inherited some old guilt from their great-grandparents.”

— Marko Kloos

17. “When a drop ship pilot tells you that the flight is going to be a little bumpy, strap in firmly and prepare to lose a filling or two.”

— Marko Kloos

18. “Science... it works.”

— Marko Kloos

19. “Well, it was nice being all introspective, Andrew. Now let’s get back to shooting people.”

— Marko Kloos

20. “I don’t suppose alcohol is allowed on military ships?” Dr. Stewart asks the colonel. “I could really go for a strong drink right now.” “No, it’s not allowed,” he replies. “And of course we have some.”

— Marko Kloos

21. “You can’t read good-night stories to your bank account, or brush its hair, or teach it how to ride a bike for the first time.”

— Marko Kloos

22. “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,” he says.”

— Marko Kloos

23. “Your battalion or regiment is your clan, your company is your extended family, your platoon is your immediate family, and your squad is your household. Like every family, we have our internal quarrels, but when some outsider picks a fight with one of us, we close rank.”

— Marko Kloos

24. “We have more computing power in the drop ships’ tactical integrated neural network computers than existed on the entire planet fifty years ago, and somehow mission planning goes better when you’re outside in the fresh air and drawing diagrams and maps into the dirt with a pointy stick. “Two.”

— Marko Kloos

25. “The coffee is truly awful, but there’s something soothing and familiar about its perfect awfulness.”

— Marko Kloos

26. “I fight because it’s the only way I have to control my destiny at least a little bit.”

— Marko Kloos

27. “But the war happened. For better or worse, we old farts chose to make it happen.”

— Marko Kloos

28. “I used to think those big knives of yours are a bit barbaric,” she said. “But after yesterday, I think a little chopping might be in order here and there.”

— Marko Kloos

29. “Paranoia is one of the defining traits of the experienced combat soldier.”

— Marko Kloos

30. “Lock ’em in a room with two anvils, and in ten minutes they’ll have lost one and broken the other,” he says.”

— Marko Kloos

31. “Even with the immediate threat of extinction, government bureaucracies grind as slowly as ever.”

— Marko Kloos

32. “When you do exactly as you’re told, and you’re neither the best nor the worst at any task, you can disappear in the crowd and have a small measure of solitude.”

— Marko Kloos

33. “In truth, warfare has changed very little since our great-great-grandfathers killed each other at places like Gettysburg, the Somme, Normandy, or Baghdad. It’s still mostly about scared men with rifles charging into places defended by other scared men with rifles.”

— Marko Kloos

34. “This is more like it,” Elin says. “What’s that?” I ask. “Decent weather. Clear line of sight. A bunch of subjects to observe in the wild. And only a medium-high risk of violent death.” “Living the dream,” I say.”

— Marko Kloos

35. “When she tells you to jump, I highly suggest you are in the air before you even ask for an altitude parameter.”

— Marko Kloos

36. “When the Combat Stations alert blares and everyone around you loses their head, it’s too late to be standing in line at the armory to sign out your pistol.”

— Marko Kloos

37. “We are so incredibly skilled at adapting to even the most hostile of environments, and so often we use those skills to be more efficient at killing each other.”

— Marko Kloos

38. “In another life, back before I learned to put the satisfaction of my ego further down in the stack of my priorities, I would have enjoyed taking up the gauntlet. Now it’s just a minor irritant, not important enough to justify the expense of energy or brain bandwidth.”

— Marko Kloos

39. “And what we didn’t ruin, we fought over incessantly, killing each other by the millions over the centuries as our technology far outpaced our ability to keep the vestigial lizard parts of our brains in check.”

— Marko Kloos

40. “The universe is falling apart around us, and we still have nothing smarter to do than to try and kill each other.”

— Marko Kloos