Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1)

by John Scalzi

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

For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.

“Listen to me now: There has never been a military in the entire history of the human race that has gone to war equipped with more than the least that it needs to fight its enemy. War is expensive. It costs money and it costs lives and no civilization has an infinite amount of either. So when you fight, you conserve. You use and equip only as much as you have to, never more. He stared at us grimly. “Is any of this getting through? Do any of you understand what I’m trying to tell you? You don’t have these shiny new bodies and pretty new weapons because we want to give you an unfair advantage. You have these bodies and weapons because they are the absolute minimum that will allow you to fight and survive out there. We didn’t want to give you these bodies, you dipshits. It’s just that if we didn’t, the human race would already be extinct. “Do you understand now? Do you finally have an idea of what you’re up against? Do you?”

Reading this back and it absolutely HITS.

You can’t afford anthropomorphic biases when some of the aliens most like us would rather make human hamburgers than peace.”

“I’m a seething cauldron of disconnected rage on the inside, Lieutenant.” “Ah, repression,” Keyes said. “Excellent.

Ruiz wouldn’t compliment his mother for giving birth to him, if you know what I mean.”

Ruiz was easily the best character in this whole book you can't change my mind

“What is it like when you lose someone you love?” Jane asked. “You die, too,” I said. “And you wait around for your body to catch up.”

“You may refer to me as Ambassador, unworthy though I am of the title,” the Consu said. “I am a criminal, having disgraced myself in battle on Pahnshu, and therefore am made to speak to you in your tongue. For this shame I crave death and a term of just punishment before my rebirth. It is my hope that as a result of these proceedings I will be viewed as somewhat less unworthy, and will thus be released to death. It is why I soil myself by speaking to you.” “It’s nice to meet you, too,” I said.