The End of All Things (Old Man's War, #6)

by John Scalzi

It’s hard to sell the official story to people who can see things for themselves.

“One of the nice things about my line of work is that people who don’t know much about it have an infinite capacity to believe that I can do anything, including fabricate incriminating evidence out of thin air.”

“You are hurt because you attacked us,” I said. “You cannot attack us and expect nothing to happen in return.”

“You’re doing that thing where you’re trying to be nice to someone you were just trying to kill,” Powell said. “It doesn’t work, because they remember you were trying to kill them five minutes ago.”

“you appear to be under the impression that by sheer force of personality, you will change your circumstances at the moment. That you will, by issuing demands in that stentorian campaign voice of yours, cow me to your will.

“And so we learn how simple it is to change the history of the universe,” Sorvalh said. “All you need is for every other thing to have gone so horribly wrong first.”