The Martian quotes

View Quote Annie Montrose: But if something goes wrong?
Vincent Kapoor: Then we lose the crew.
Bruce Ng: So what, we either have a high chance of killing one person, or a low chance of killing six people. How do we make that decision?
Vincent Kapoor: We don't. [pointing to Teddy] He does.
Mitch Henderson: Yeah, bullshit. It should be Commander Lewis' call.
Teddy Sanders: We still have a chance to bring five astronauts home safe and sound. I'm not risking their lives.
Mitch Henderson: Let them make that decision.
Teddy Sanders: Mitch, we are going with option one.
Mitch Henderson: You goddamn coward.

View Quote Annie Montrose: What the hell is "Project Elrond?"
Vincent Kapoor: I had to make something up.
Annie Montrose: But "Elrond?"
Mitch Henderson: Because it's a secret meeting.
Annie Montrose: How do you know that; why does Elrond mean secret meeting?
Bruce Ng: The Council of Elrond. It's the... it's... it's... from The Lord of the Rings. It's the meeting where they decide to destroy the One Ring.
Teddy Sanders: If we are going to call something Project Elrond, I would like my code name to be Glorfindel.
Annie Montrose: Okay, I hate every one of you.

View Quote Melissa Lewis: All right team, stay in sight of each other. Let's make NASA proud today.
Rick Martinez: How's it looking over there, Watney?
Mark Watney: Well, you will be happy to hear that in Grid Section 14-28, the particles were predominately coarse but in 29, they're much finer and they should be ideal for chem analysis.
Rick Martinez: Oh, wow. Did everybody hear that? Mark just discovered dirt. [laughs] Should we alert the media?

View Quote Melissa Lewis: You're in Martinez's hands now.
Mark Watney: Well... tell that asshole no barrel rolls.

View Quote Mitch Henderson: He's not even got to the bad parts yet.
Vincent Kapoor: Well, let's get to the bad parts.
Bruce Ng: We need to remove the nose LR, the windows, and the whole of panel 19.
Vincent Kapoor: You want to take the front of the ship off?
Bruce Ng: Sure. The nose alone is 400 kilograms.
Vincent Kapoor: You want to send a man into space without the front of his ship?
Bruce Ng: Well, no. We are going to have him cover it with HAB canvas. The hull is mostly there to keep air in. Mars' atmosphere is so thin, you do not need a lot of streamlining. By the time the ship is going fast enough for air resistance to matter, it'll be high enough that there will be practically no air.
Vincent Kapoor: You want to send him into space under a tarp?
Bruce Ng: Yes. Can I go on?
Vincent Kapoor: NO!

View Quote Teddy Sanders: I just had to explain to the President of the United States what a bureaucratic felcher is.
Mitch Henderson: I made the mistake of typing it into Google. Don't.

View Quote Vincent Kapoor: How's he doing?
Mindy Park: Uh... He asked us to call him Captain Blondebeard.

View Quote [after hearing he has to take the top off of the Mars Ascent Vehicle] I know what they're doing. I know exactly what they're doing. They just keep repeating "go faster than any man in the history of space travel", like that's a good thing. Like it'll distract me from how insane their plan is. Yeah, I get to go faster than any man in the history of space travel, because you're launching me in a convertible. Actually it's worse than that, because I won't even be able to control the thing. And by the way, physicists, when describing things like acceleration do not use the word "fast". So they're only doing that in the hopes that I won't raise any objections to this lunacy, because I like the way "fastest man in the history of space travel" sounds. I do like the way it sounds... I mean, I like it a lot. [pauses] I'm not gonna tell them that.

View Quote [after trying to make water by burning hydrogen] So... I blew myself up.

View Quote [reading Watney's transcript] Okay, he says, "They don't know I'm alive? What the--" F-word, F-word in gerund form, F-word again "--is wrong with you?"

View Quote At some point, everything's gonna go south on you... everything's going to go south and you're going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That's all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem... and you solve the next one... and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home. All right, questions?

View Quote Every time something goes wrong, the world forgets why we fly.

View Quote Good news: I may have a solution to my heating problem. Bad news: it involves me digging up the radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Now, if I remember my training correctly, one of the lessons was titled: "Don't dig up the big box of plutonium, Mark." I get it; RTGs are good for spacecraft, but if they rupture around humans... no more humans, which is why we buried it when we arrived. And planted that flag so we would never be stupid enough to accidentally go near it again. But, as long as I don't break it... [trails off, then starts laughing] I almost just said "Everything will be fine," out loud. Look, the point is, I'm not cold anymore.

View Quote Hi, I'm Mark Watney and I'm still alive... obviously.

View Quote I admit it's fatally dangerous, but I'd get to fly around like Iron Man.