“To everyone who thinks writing a sequel should be easy because you’ve already clreated the universe: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha! Heh. No.”
— John Scalzi
“Is it painful?” the groundskeeper asked. “I am asking for science.”
— John Scalzi
“Yes, he’s an equal opportunity asshole,” Szilard said. “And he’s aware of it, which he thinks means it’s okay.”
— John Scalzi
“I do not mind when you tell me what you want and put that first instead of last.”
— John Scalzi
“Rich people show their appreciation through favors. When everyone you know has more money than they know what to do with, money stops being a useful transactional tool. So instead you offer favors. Deals. Quid pro quos. Things that involve personal involvement rather than money. Because when you’re that rich, your personal time is your limiting factor.”
— John Scalzi
“Dreher laments we now live in a “post-Christian” America, but he’s wrong. The Americans who are standing with their loved ones and neighbors are in fact doing exactly what Jesus asked them to do, when he said that we should love each other as we love ourselves. It’s possible, however, that we live in a post-accepting-bigotry-cloaking-itself-in-the-raiments-of-Christ America. And, you know. I can live in that America just fine.”
— John Scalzi
“Trust your weapon, it is almost certainly smarter than you are. Remember this and you may yet live.”
— John Scalzi
“I was getting away with something in my own way. But then I get here and saw you, brain-dead and with tubes coming out of every part of your body. And I realized I wasn’t getting away with anything. Just like you didn’t get away with anything. You were just born, fucked around for a while, got hit by a car and died, and that’s your whole life story right there. You don’t win by getting through all you life not having done anything.”
— John Scalzi
“Creativity eventually comes from the need not to have ourselves or other people eaten by leopards.”
— John Scalzi
“Destiny gets compressed, you know, into just that small fraction of a second you have right in front of you at any one time. And there’s nothing romantic about keeping your head down to avoid getting shot, or trying to save a friend who’s been injured, or coming face to face with a creature who is as smart and mean and as terrified of dying as you are, and who wants to make sure that if someone is left on the ground there, it’s you and not it.”
— John Scalzi
“If your social consciousness seems stuck in 1975, 2014 is gonna be a rough ride.”
— John Scalzi
“I’m more interested in becoming a commercial writer, and unfortunately, commentary on my writing from a bunch of other unpublished writers is of little utility in that regard. Being a better writer is something of a moot point, since if you’re not a commercial writer to some extent, very few people will know whether your writing is any good or not.”
— John Scalzi
“Making peace is often a simple thing, but simple isn’t the same thing as easy.”
— John Scalzi
“You can’t afford anthropomorphic biases when some of the aliens most like us would rather make human hamburgers than peace.”
— John Scalzi
“That’s what I’d ask you to do: Hope for peace. Because I know that I would love to be able to lay down my weapon and get to being a colonist. Just like you are. Just like I want to be.”
— John Scalzi
“I’ll say it: I want to see an ugly woman as a spokeswoman for a women’s network. Ugly men are out there all the time – look at Larry King, for God’s sake. He looks like someone’s talking underwear. Why not give America a spokeswoman who ain’t much to look at but is competent as Hell? If accomplishments actually count for women, this ought to be a no-brainer.”
— John Scalzi
“Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.”
— John Scalzi
“Fear is a scavenger who feeds on the future; on what may be and what is possible, extending down the line of our lives.”
— John Scalzi
“Fear sits and smiles and is predatory, immobile and silent and serene; an observer who conserves his energy and is content to wait.”
— John Scalzi
“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
“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
“The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”
— John Scalzi