Agent to the Stars Quotes

“What if I told you that that which makes you fundamentally human is something that you share with another people, a people so different from you that they might appear strange or frightening at first glance. A people who might terrify you from appearance alone. Could you make the jump, and understand that inside, they are not so different at all?”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“Look,” he said. “We’d like you to return the salary.” “Oh, is that all?” I said. “Heck. That’s easy. The answer is no.” “What?” “No.” “No?” “What part of that two-letter word don’t you understand, Brad?” I asked. “Was it the vowel that threw you, or the consonant ?”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“Are we there yet?” I asked Joshua. “No,” Joshua said. “Are we there yet?” I said. “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “Yes,” Joshua said. “Stop the car.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“The ientcio wishes to inform you that we have indeed received those messages from SETI and have found them … amusing is probably the best word. Television is much more interesting.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“The Yherajk were a less immediate but infinitely more complicated problem—alien globs who want to befriend a humanity that, if asked, would probably prefer to be befriended by something with an endoskeleton.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“That’s a distinction that’s going to make a lot of difference to the ninety percent of humanity that doesn’t know the difference between astrology and astronomy,”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“It’s the award of Rachel Spiegelman, who saw hatred of the demonized ‘other’ destroy her world, and dedicated the rest of her life to making sure that we saw men, all men, as brothers, regardless of their color or their creed.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“you can at times seem to be a culture of pathological liars, unable yourselves to tell the difference between truth and falsity. You can see how that can make us nervous to initiate contact. We need someone to help us create a context, so we can separate the truth from the lies and make an accurate reckoning of the status of your planet.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“You can fool some of the Air Force all of the time, and all of the Air Force some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the Air Force all of the time.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“Then we caught the presidential debates. The people you folks elect are sort of scary. And you Americans are the folks that do it the best on this entire planet. Besides, your president only speaks for Americans. American movies speak for your world. Who hasn’t seen Wizard of Oz? Or Jaws? Or Star Wars?”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“elements that are in almost all of my works—an emphasis on humor and dialogue, people discussing ethical and moral conundrums, and a general “accessibility” that makes it easy to give to people who don’t usually read science fiction and say “try this.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“Just because I come from a highly advanced alien species doesn't mean I can't be intensely neurotic. Can we go now? I already feel like I want to scream.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“ex machina. I”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“But my car upholstery was a small price to pay for interplanetary peace.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“Then we caught the presidential debates. The people you folks elect are sort of scary.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“Anything worth doing is worth doing at a fevered pitch.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“I can't believe you just quoted a Steve Miller tune to the leader of an alien race," Van Doren, standing next to me, muttered under his breath.
"Shut up," I muttered back. "It worked.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“It was clear that he didn't think Joshua was any great prize. But the same could be said of him; Al Bowen was one of those guys who looked like he had spent far too much of his life being a roadie for the Grateful Dead.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“Your president only speaks for Americans. American movies speak for your world. Who hasn't seen Wizard of Oz? Or Jaws? Or Star Wars? We've seen them, and we're not even from this planet.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars

“Other countries pass laws requiring that their movie theaters, television networks, and radio stations have to play a certain percentage of homegrown entertainment. Because if they didn't, Hollywood would wipe it all out. We're not a world leader because we have nuclear missiles and submarines. We are because we have Bugs Bunny and Friends. Our planet is what Hollywood has made it.”
― John Scalzi, Agent to the Stars