John Scalzi - Old Man's War (2005)

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When you're a teenager and you're in love, it's obvious to everyone but you and the person you're in love with.

John Scalzi
I'm not sure I like their plan for converting us to their religion, seeing as it involves dying and all.

John Scalzi
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.

John Scalzi
Obviously, the Rraey have some way to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, where our ships are going to skip. How do they do that?
I don't think you're supposed to be able to, I said.
That's exactly right. But they do anyway. So, quite obviously, our model of how skipping works is wrong. Theory gets thrown out the window when observation proves it isn't so. The question now is what is really going on.

John Scalzi
I'm not insane, sir, I said. I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.

John Scalzi
It's easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she's never been anything but dead, than to miss her at all the places where she was alive.

John Scalzi
The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another—it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time.
You can't stop aging. Gene therapies and replacement organs and plastic surgery give it a good fight. But it catches up with you anyway. Get a new lung, and your heart blows a valve. Get a new heart, and your liver swells up to the size of an inflatable kiddie pool. Change out your liver, a stroke gives you a whack. That's aging's trump card; they still can't replace brains.

John Scalzi
My marriage had its ups and downs like anyone's, but when it came down to it, I knew it was solid. I miss that sort of security, and that sort of connection with someone.

John Scalzi
I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.

John Scalzi
What's the point of being in charge if you can't indulge in pointless favoritism.

John Scalzi
Now, you may think that this is some sort of generalized hatred that I will carry for the lot of you. Let me assure you that this is not the case. Each of you will fail, but you will fail in your own unique way, and therefore I will dislike each of you on an individual basis.

John Scalzi
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.

John Scalzi
If the universe is bigger and stranger than I can imagine, it's best to meet it with an empty bladder.

John Scalzi
You do what you have to do to give people closure; it makes them feel better and it doesn't cost you much to do it. I'd rather apologize for something I didn't really care about and leave someone on Earth wishing me well.

John Scalzi
Part of what makes us human is what we mean to other people, and what people mean to us.

John Scalzi