John Scalzi
43 quotes
Biography
John Michael Scalzi II is an American science fiction author and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Old Man's War series, three novels of which have been nominated for the Hugo Award, and for his blog Whatever, where he has written on a number of topics since 1998.
"Humor is rare in science fiction... there's so little of it that it automatically reminds you of other heroes with that acerbic humor when you find it."
"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)."
"The failure mode of clever is “asshole."
"(T)he idealized world Ayn Rand has created to facilitate her wishful theorizing has no more logical connection to our real one than a world in which an author has imagined humanity ruled by intelligent cups of yogurt. This is most obviously revealed by the fact that in Ayn Rand’s world, a man who self-righteously instigates the collapse of society, thereby inevitably killing millions if not billions of people, is portrayed as a messiah figure rather than as a genocidal prick, which is what he’d be anywhere else."
"Many people believe geekdom is defined by a love of a thing, but I think - and my experience of geekdom bears on this thinking - that the true sign of a geek is a delight in sharing a thing. It's the major difference between a geek and a hipster, you know: When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say "Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love." When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say "ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.""
"I had never seen so many old people in one place at one time. Neither had Harry. “It’s like Wednesday morning at the world’s biggest Denny’s,” he said."
"What’s the point of being in charge if you can’t indulge in pointless favoritism."
"The recruit was Sam McCain; in one of our lunch sessions I recalled Sarah O’Connell describing him as more mouth than brain. Unsurprisingly, he’d been in sales most of his life."
"In this universe, experience counts."
"I’m not sure I like their plan for converting us to their religion, seeing as it involves dying and all."
"“I’m not insane, sir,” I said. “I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.”"
"“It’s Charlie’s soul,” he repeated. “Or more accurately, it’s a holographic representation of the dynamic electrical system that embodies the consciousness of Charles Boutin.”"
"Human technology was good, and weapon to weapon humans were as well-equipped as the vast majority of their adversaries. But the weapon that ultimately matters is the one behind the trigger."
"Those people you saw—the realborn—are born without a plan. They’re born because biology tells humans to make more humans; but it doesn’t consider what to do with them after that. 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. Sad. And inefficient."
"Rationality is not one of humanity’s strong points."
"Jared, allow me to share with you my philosophy of human beings. It can be summed up in four words: I like good people."
"“I didn’t say that,” Szilard said, in a tone that implied that perhaps he had."
"When power is within reach, few will wait patiently for it."
"No, it's not fair. You're in the wrong universe for fair."
"That’s physicists for you. Not exactly brimming over with poetry."
"“Harry!” Boutin said. “Nice guy. Didn’t know he was that smart. He hid it well.”"
"You are sufficiently like me to officially be interesting."
"Imagine if every species named itself after its greatest flaw. We could name our species arrogance."
"She was temptable—which, if you believe in an all-powerful God, means God intentionally put temptation into Eve. Which seems like a dirty trick, if you ask me."
"Harvey was not especially introspective, but this didn’t mean he was stupid. He was moral, within his lights; he understood the value of subtlety even if he wasn’t much for it himself, and one of the reasons he could get away with being loud and obnoxious was that he was a fair stick at strategy and logistics. Give him a job and he’d do it, usually in the most entropy-producing way possible, yes, but also in a way that achieved exactly the aim it was supposed to. 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. When asked about it, Harvey called it his Occam’s razor theory of combat: The simplest way of kicking someone’s ass was usually the correct one."