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

by John Scalzi

Lots of things can be more important than money when you lacked other options.

Maybe they wouldn’t let me starve, but they weren’t going to make me comfortable.

This isn’t the romance of space. This is you and space in a nice, comfortable rut.

I knew he was done when he said “But I must be boring you” to me, which is narcissist-speak for “Now I’m bored.”

My position has come largely from being usefully competent to others, each more powerful than the next.

Poorly worded. It seems to say that each person was progressively weaker. Next should be last.

my first meeting for the sur, the Conclave’s standard day.

Sur was defined as forty days in The Human Division.

“It’s easier to be the aspirational leader when the thing you’re building doesn’t exist. But now it exists, and you’re not aspirational anymore. Now you’re just the chief bureaucrat. Bureaucrats don’t inspire awe.”

The Fflict recognized five genders: male, female, zhial, yal, and neuter. Aul was zhial, and ze liked zis pronouns accurately stated. I would too, in zis position.

He said nothing—I don’t believe he could say anything at that point—but simply watched me looking at him, holding him in his last moments of life. Then he stopped watching and left me.

Tarsem’s security staff swarming over me and him, pulling me off of him and dragging the both of us away, me presumably to safety, and Tarsem to oblivion.

it was designed to operate with minimal assistance from humans, who were without exception the moving part most likely to fail.

I walked down the street, found another street that looked interesting, and started walking down it into the first day of another life. I think it was a Saturday.

I love the way the story went through the days of the week. Clever JS

If someone is telling you to live in interesting times, they are basically telling you they want you to die horribly, and to suffer terribly before you do.

“It’s better to be a dog in peace, than a man in war.”

My problem is, I live in interesting times.

“Captain, the problem is not that I’m paranoid. The problem is that the universe keeps justifying my paranoia.”

“But I have always found that there’s an inverse relationship between the number of people in a room and the amount of useful work that can be done.

“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.”

“I’m a terrific boss, and I’ll brutally sabotage the career of any underling who says different.”