Top 300 Martha Wells Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Once I started telling the truth, it was hard to stop.”

— Martha Wells

202. “It had been such a stupid question, I had forgotten not to have an expression.”

— Martha Wells

203. “I’ll give you one more answer. The words Bashasa spoke to me before he died were ‘Don’t let everything we fought for be for nothing.”

— Martha Wells

204. “It looked very unrealistic and inaccurate, which was exactly what I liked.”

— Martha Wells

205. “For one thing, the shows and serials were trying to communicate accurately with the viewer. As far as I could tell, real humans usually didn’t know what the hell they were doing.”

— Martha Wells

206. “That’s mostly a metaphor. My uneaten client stat is high.”

— Martha Wells

207. “The problem with gunships is they want to shoot at stuff.”

— Martha Wells

208. “Humans touch stuff all the time, I wish they wouldn’t.”

— Martha Wells

209. “I guess you could pay off the management to let you bring in a SecUnit and weapons and do a hostage exchange, but they drew the line at giving you free feed access.”

— Martha Wells

210. “I have extracted living clients from situations that were less than nine percent survivable. I’m more than qualified to make that call.”

— Martha Wells

211. “For my entire existence, at least the parts I could remember, I had done nothing but accept the inevitable. I was tired of it.”

— Martha Wells

212. “It’s fine. I’ll notify you immediately if I encounter any not-dead humans.” I was trying to lighten the mood but that one absolutely did not stick its landing.”

— Martha Wells

213. “Data suggests family dramas bear a less than 10 percent resemblance to actual human families, which is unsurprising and also a relief, considering all the murders. In the dramas, not Mensah’s family.”

— Martha Wells

214. “All the humans looked up at the ceiling. ART said, And this is your idea of being helpful. I said, “This is my idea of the opposite of being helpful. I am here against my will and you are going to regret that.”

— Martha Wells

215. “You’re stalling, ART-drone said. I am not. I can stand here and be useless without any ulterior motives, thanks.”

— Martha Wells

216. “I felt a little guilty, sort of, almost.”

— Martha Wells

217. “No, I impersonated my client. My imaginary client. That I impersonated.” I was caught in a loop for a second there.”

— Martha Wells

218. “I told myself I still looked like a SecUnit without armor, hopelessly exposed, but the truth was I did look more human. And now I knew why I hadn’t wanted to do this. It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person.”

— Martha Wells

219. “Iris was already out of the danger zone, walking backward so she could watch. “Be safe, SecUnit,” she said. I don’t know how to respond when humans say that. It was always my job to get hurt.”

— Martha Wells

220. “ART-drone said, Your performance reliability level had a .05 percent spike. ART has been monitoring me due to redacted. Which is a whole thing, I don’t know, I don’t want to talk about it.”

— Martha Wells

221. “Humans have a bad tendency to use weapons unnecessarily and indiscriminately. Of the many times I had been shot, a depressingly large percentage of hits had come from clients who were trying to “help” me.”

— Martha Wells

222. “That isn’t how this works, expositor.” Then he peeled Tarrow’s soul from his body and ate his life.”

— Martha Wells

223. “I’d won the argument, yay me, so I left.”

— Martha Wells

224. “I could have asked what “or worse” meant in this context but there was only so much I could take and I thought I’d hit my limit about, I don’t know, four years ago.”

— Martha Wells

225. “Asa took her arm, gently. “They can’t talk,” he told her. She shook her head as her friends steered her back toward the access bridge. “No, it talked. I heard it.” Note to self: shut up.”

— Martha Wells

226. “It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person.”

— Martha Wells

227. “If I was wrong, I’d probably be dead, and that was bad enough. Being stupid and dead would just be that much worse.”

— Martha Wells

228. “I hadn’t looked at the maps yet and I’d barely looked at the survey package. In my defense, we’d been here twenty-two planetary days and I hadn’t had to do anything but stand around watching humans make scans or take samples of dirt, rocks, water, and leaves. The sense of urgency just wasn’t there. Also, you may have noticed, I don’t care.”

— Martha Wells

229. “Nobody grabs SecUnits. I hadn’t realized this was a perk until now.”

— Martha Wells

230. “The good thing about being a construct is that I can have a dramatic emotional breakdown while still running my background search to find the drone key commands.”

— Martha Wells

231. “Did I understand how it processed its emotions? No. But I don’t understand how I process my emotions, either.”

— Martha Wells

232. “I panic all the time, you just can’t see it, I told her. I added the text signifier for “joke.”

— Martha Wells

233. “You know, if you don’t want to be manually eviscerated with your own energy weapon then maybe you shouldn’t go around killing research transports and antagonizing rogue SecUnits.”

— Martha Wells

234. “I don’t make threats, I’m just telling you what I’m going to do.”

— Martha Wells

235. “Bad things may not be more statistically possible but it sure seems like they are.”

— Martha Wells

236. “But still, a small metal container filled with mushy humans hurtling over spiky rocks for long periods agitates my threat assessment module. There were so many ways to crash and die in mountain ranges, it was also making my stupid risk assessment randomly alert.”

— Martha Wells

237. “Along with the horror of what had just happened, there had been the dawning realization that they had fallen into thinking of their SecUnit as a faceless machine, a convenience, an interface with their security system. But it had taken a sentient being who understood fear and pain to talk its way through Volescu’s blind terror.”

— Martha Wells

238. “I had a plan, but it was mostly “keep the hostiles off the ship,” which is not so much a plan as a statement of hopeful intent.”

— Martha Wells

239. “Strange synthetics are usually harmless, emphasis on the “usually.” But organic elements can be really dangerous, where “really” means everyone dies horribly and nobody can ever go to the planet again.”

— Martha Wells

240. “No, the font was lovely. But whenever the company is mentioned you edit out the company and change it to the company.”

— Martha Wells

241. “You don’t have to thank me for doing my stupid job. But it is nice.”

— Martha Wells

242. “I’d watched a lot of humans watch or read all kinds of media, so I knew that when they didn’t talk and didn’t move much except to eat crunchy things out of bags, it was a good sign.”

— Martha Wells

243. “I hate hostage situations. Even when I’m the one with the hostages.”

— Martha Wells

244. “The only thing worse than humans infantilizing bots was bots infantilizing themselves.”

— Martha Wells

245. “The horrific emotional consequences of the worst mistake of his life aside, Kai had an idea.”

— Martha Wells

246. “Yellow came towards me and touched the side of my helmet. It took tremendous effort for me not to rip his arm off, and I’d like that noted for the record, please.”

— Martha Wells

247. “This was no time to be an idiot.”

— Martha Wells

248. “So the next time I get optimistic about something, I want one of you to punch me in the face.”

— Martha Wells

249. “I’m not going to eat you, we’re friends.”

— Martha Wells

250. “I had only taken three projectiles to the right shoulder, four to the left hip. This is how we fight: throw ourselves at each other and see whose parts give out first.”

— Martha Wells