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

by John Scalzi

Then I realized I couldn’t taste my mouth. Don’t look at me like that, because even though I can’t see you I know you’re looking at me like that. Listen. I don’t care if you ever think about the fact that you can always taste your mouth. You are always tasting your mouth. It’s where you keep your tongue. Your tongue doesn’t have an off switch. You are tasting your mouth right now, and now that I’ve brought it to your attention, you’re probably realizing that you should probably brush or chew some gum or something. Because your mouth, by default, is a kind of a little off, taste-wise.

“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.”

“Where’s the debris?” “Behind and above us. It missed us with a couple plint to spare.” “You almost killed us.” “Almost,” Aul agreed. “Please don’t do that again.” “The good news is, now I don’t have to.”

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

A system of government, stable for centuries, predicated on killing the shit out of everyone else and taking their land. That’s practically the modus operandi of every successful human civilization to date.

there’s an inverse relationship between the number of people in a room and the amount of useful work that can be done.

“I want to not have to think of you, Ambassador Lowen! Or of you, Ambassador Abumwe! Or of humanity. At all. Can you understand this, Madams Ambassador? Do you understand how truly tiring your people are? How much of my time has gone into dealing with humans?”