John Scalzi: Quotes about life

John Scalzi is American science fiction writer. Explore interesting quotes on life.

John Scalzi: 136 quotes2 likes

“There's a difference between the fact that the universe is inherently unfair on a cosmic level, and the fact that life is unfair because people are actively making it so.”

“You would rather face a life without me than to have me choose a life I would not choose for myself.”

Source: The Sagan Diary

“When you’re a kid, a rural, agriculturally-based colony town is a lot of fun to grow up in. It’s life on a farm, with goats and chickens and fields of wheat and sorghum, harvest celebrations and winter festivals. There’s not an eight- or nine-year-old kid who’s been invented who doesn’t find all of that unspeakably fun. But then you become a teenager and you start thinking about everything you might possibly want to do with your life, and you look at the options available to you. And then all farms, goats and chickens—and all the same people you’ve known all your life and will know all your life—begin to look a little less than optimal for a total life experience. It’s all the same, of course. That’s the point. It’s you who’s changed.”

John Scalzi book Zoe's Tale

Source: Zoe's Tale (2008), Chapter 1 (pp. 27-28)

“You don’t win by getting through all your life not having done anything.”

John Scalzi book Redshirts

Coda II: Second Person (p. 292)
Redshirts (2012)

“Sometimes I don’t know if my life is complicated, or if it’s that I just think too much about things.”

John Scalzi book Zoe's Tale

Source: Zoe's Tale (2008), Chapter 7 (p. 76)

“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.”

Source: Old Man’s War (2005), Chapter 8 (p. 136)

“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.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 5 (p. 86)