2. “I admit it’s fatally dangerous, but I’d get to fly around like Iron Man.” – Mark Watney
3. “I’ve been in mortal danger for months; I’m kind of used to it now. But I’m nervous again. Dying would suck, but my crewmates dying would be way worse.” – Mark Watney
4. “I don’t want to come off as arrogant here, but I’m the greatest botanist on this planet.” – Mark Watney
5. “My guess is pockets of ice formed around some of the bacteria. Life is amazingly tenacious. They don’t want to die any more than I do.” – Mark Watney
6. “Every time something goes wrong, the world forgets why we fly.” – Teddy Sanders
7. “How long are we gonna keep this from the Ares 3 crew? They all think Watney’s dead. It’s a huge drain on morale.” – Mitch Henderson
8. “The biggest threat is giving up hope.” – Dr. Irene Shields
9. “This will come as quite a shock to my crew mates. And to NASA And to the world. But I’m still alive. Surprise!” – Mark Watney
10. “Every human being has a basic instinct—to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies.” – Mark Watney
11. “This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are *ssh*l*s who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do.” – Mark Watney
12. “Sirius 1 was aborted after one hour. I guess you could call it a ‘failure’, but I prefer the term ‘learning experience.’” – Mark Watney
13. “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.” – Mark Watney
14. “I’m not gonna die here.” – Mark Watney
15. “To them, equipment failure is terrifying. To me, it’s ‘Tuesday.’” – Mark Watney
16. “It just feels nice to be an astronaut. That’s all it is. Not a reluctant farmer, not an electrical engineer, not a long-haul trucker. An astronaut. I’m doing what astronauts do. I missed it.” – Mark Watney
17. “At first, I figured it was my duty. But then it started to get fun. Now, as I drive, I look forward to that simple act of bagging rocks.” – Mark Watney
18. “Mark Watney’s prolonged mission and fight for survival are giving us more knowledge about Mars than the rest of the Ares program combined.” – Mark Watney
19. “You probably think losing a crewman is the worst thing that can happen. Not true. Losing the whole crew is worse. You kept that from happening.” – Commander Lewis
20. “It wasn’t your fault. In your position, I would have done the same thing. I don’t blame you, and I’m glad you survived.” – Mark Watney
21. “I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet.” – Mark Watney
22. “I never realized how utterly silent Mars is. It’s a desert world with practically no atmosphere to convey sound. I could hear my own heartbeat.” – Mark Watney
23. “Who am I to talk about loneliness?” – Mark Watney
24. “This was an insane plan and somehow it worked! I’m going to be talking to someone again. I spent three months as the loneliest man in history and it’s finally over.” – Mark Watney
25. “Mars is a barren wasteland and I am completely alone here. I already knew that, of course. But there’s a difference between knowing it and really experiencing it.” – Mark Watney
26. “They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it. So, technically, I colonized Mars. In your face, Neil Armstrong!” – Mark Watney
27. “No matter what happens, tell the world, tell my family that I never stopped fighting to make it home.” – Mark Watney
28. “When I get back home, I want all the praise to go towards me.” – Mark Watney
29. “I wonder if they’ll ever find out what really happened. I’ve been so busy staying alive I never thought of what this must be like for my parents.” – Mark Watney
30. “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.” – Mark Watney
31. “Back on Earth, universities and governments are willing to pay millions to get their hands on Mars rocks. I’m using them as ballast.” – Mark Watney
32. “Once I got home, I sulked for a while. All my brilliant plans foiled by thermodynamics. Damn you, Entropy!” – Mark Watney
33. “I am definitely going to die up here—if I have to listen to any more god–awful disco music.” – Mark Watney
34. “If I want water, I’ll have to make it from scratch. Fortunately, I know the recipe—take hydrogen. Add oxygen. Burn.” – Mark Watney
35. “I’m left with only one option, I’m going to have to science the sh*t out of this.” – Mark Watney
36. “If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab beaches, I’ll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah, I’m f*ck*d.” – Mark Watney
37. “All right, let me get a few things out of the way, right off the bat. Yes, I did in fact survive on a deserted planet by farming in my own sh*t. Yes, it’s actually worse than it sounds. So, let’s not talk about that ever again.” – Mark Watney
38. “It has been seven days since I ran out of ketchup.” – Mark Watney
39. “I got to figure out a way to grow three years’ worth of food here. On a planet where nothing grows. Luckily. I’m a botanist.” – Mark Watney
40. “My terrifying struggle to stay alive became somehow routine.” – Mark Watney
41. “My life is now a desperate struggle for survival—with occasional titration.” – Mark Watney
42. “I got bounced around a lot, but I’m a well-honed machine in times of crisis. As soon as the rover toppled, I curled into a ball and cowered. That’s the kind of action hero I am.” – Mark Watney
43. “It’s awesome to have a bunch of dipshits on Earth telling me, a botanist, how to grow plants.” – Mark Watney
44. “It’s been 48 sols since I planted the potatoes. So now it’s time to reap and re-sow. They grew even better than I expected. I now have 400 healthy potato plants. I dug them up being careful to leave their plants alive. The smaller ones I’ll reseed, the larger ones are my food supply. All-natural, organic, martian-grown potatoes. You don’t hear that every day, do you? And by the way, none of this matters at all if I can’t figure out a way to make contact with NASA.” – Mark Watney
45. “And by the way, physicists, when describing things like acceleration do not use the word ‘fast.’” – Mark Watney
46. “The entire focus of NASA will be to bring Mark Watney home. This will be our overriding and singular obsession until he is either back on Earth or confirmed dead on Mars.” – Teddy Sanders
47. “My crewmates sacrificed a year of their lives to come back for me.” – Mark Watney
48. “As usual, I’m working with stuff that was deliberately designed not to burn. But no amount of careful design by NASA can get around a determined arsonist with a tank of pure oxygen.” – Mark Watney
49. “I think about the sheer number of people who pulled together just to save my sorry *ss and I can barely comprehend it.” – Mark Watney
50. “The cost for my survival must have been hundreds of millions of dollars. All to save one dorky botanist. Why bother?” – Mark Watney
51. “I’m going to be taking a craft over in international waters without permission, which by definition—makes me a pirate. Mark Watney: Space Pirate.” – Mark Watney
52. “Luckily, in the history of humanity, nothing bad has ever happened from lighting hydrogen on fire.” – Mark Watney
53. “I tested the brackets by hitting them with rocks. This kind of sophistication is what we interplanetary scientists are known for.” – Mark Watney
54. “Mars will come to fear my botany powers.” – Mark Watney
55. “Half the people who studied botany were hippies, I didn’t like them. I’ve always been in it for ‘the science.’” – Mark Watney
56. “You know what? ‘Kilowatt-hour per sol’ is a pain in the *ss to say. I’m gonna invent a new scientific unit name. One kilowatt-hour per sol is—it can be anything—um—I suck at this—I’ll call it a ‘pirate ninja.’” – Mark Watney
57. “As with most of life’s problems, this one can be solved by a box of pure radiation.” – Mark Watney
58. “There’s an international treaty saying no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. And by another treaty, if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law applies. So Mars is ‘international waters.’ NASA is an American nonmilitary organization, and it owns the Hab. So while I’m in the Hab, American law applies. As soon as I step outside, I’m in international waters. Then when I get in the rover, I’m back to American law.” – Mark Watney
59. “I’m getting pretty good at this. Maybe when all this is over I could be a product tester for Mars rovers.” – Mark Watney
60. “This is obviously a clog. How about I take it apart and check the internal tubing?” – Mark Watney
61. “The screen went black before I was out of the airlock. Turns out the ‘L’ in ‘LCD’ stands for ‘Liquid.’ I guess it either froze or boiled off.” – Mark Watney
62. “Also, I have duct tape. Ordinary duct tape, like you buy at a hardware store. Turns out even NASA can’t improve on duct tape.” – Mark Watney
63. “I should have left this guy on mars.” – Beth Johanssen
64. “I’ll spend the rest of the evening enjoying a potato. And by ‘enjoying’ I mean, ‘hating so much I want to kill people.’” – Mark Watney
65. “Anyway, my ribs hurt like hell, my vision is still blurry from acceleration sickness, I’m really hungry, it’ll be another 211 days before I’m back on Earth, and apparently, I smell like a skunk took a sh*t on some sweat socks. This is the happiest day of my life.” – Mark Watney
66. “No, I won’t ‘turn the beat around,’ I refuse to.” – Mark Watney
67. “They say no plan survives first contact with implementation. I’d have to agree.” – Mark Watney
68. “Frankly, I suspect you’re a supervillain. You’re a chemist, you have a German accent, you had a base on Mars—what more can there be?” – Mark Watney
69. “I’m sorry, Martinez, but if you didn’t want me to go through your stuff, you shouldn’t have left me for dead on a desolate planet.” – Mark Watney
70. “I’m traveling 90 kilometers per day as usual, but I only get 37 kilometers closer to Schiaparelli because Pythagoras is a dick.” – Mark Watney
71. “This all sounds like a great idea with no chance of catastrophic failure. That was sarcasm, by the way.” – Mark Watney
72. “Of course I’m going to be the fastest man to ever travel in space because they’re sending me up in a convertible.” – Mark Watney
73. “There aren’t many people who can say they’ve vandalized a three billion dollar spacecraft, but I’m one of them.” – Mark Watney
74. “I’m pretty much f*ck*d. That’s my considered opinion. F*ck*d.” – Mark Watney
75. “Did anybody ever tell you that you have the worst taste in music?” – Mark Watney
76. “To whom it may concern, take care of this Rover. She saved my life, Watney.” – Mark Watney
77. “I don’t even know who’ll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now.” – Mark Watney
78. “It just goes to show. Love of science is universal across all cultures.” – Teddy Sanders
79. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.” – Mark Watney
80. “Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be ‘in command’ if I were the only remaining person.” – Mark Watney
81. “He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?” – Mark Watney
82. “Just three words? Nothing about his physical health? His equipment? His supplies?” – Venkat
83. “Gay probe coming to save me. Got it.” – Mark Watney
84. “He left a detailed status report. I just decided to lie for no reason.” – Mindy Park
85. “Be a smart-*ss to a guy seven levels above you at your company. See how that works out.” – Venkat
86. “Problem is, if I cut a hole in the Hab, the air won’t stay inside anymore.” – Mark Watney
87. “I mean, what are we gonna say, ‘Dear America, remember that astronaut we killed and had a really nice funeral for? Turns out he’s alive and we left him on Mars. Our bad. Sincerely, NASA.’ I mean, do you realize the sh*t storm that is about to hit us?” – Annie Montrose
88. “It’s a strange feeling. Everywhere I go, I’m the first. Step outside the rover? First guy ever to be there!” – Mark Watney
89. “They’re not much different from trash bags, though I’m sure they cost $50,000 because of NASA.” – Mark Watney
90. “So, now that NASA can talk to me they won’t shut up.” – Mark Watney
91. “The first guy to grow crops on Mars.” – Mark Watney
92. “Yes, of course, duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshipped.” – Mark Watney
93 . “Welcome to the Astronaut Candidate Program. Now pay attention, because this could save your life. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.” – Mark Watney
94. “I’m even going to electrolyze my urine. That’ll make for a pleasant smell in the trailer.” – Mark Watney
95. “Because after what I’ve been through, stuff on Mars should be named after me.” – Mark Watney
96. “No. You’ll f*ck it up and die. So I took it apart.” – Mark Watney
97. “I’m calling it the Watney Triangle because after what I’ve been through, sh*t on Mars should be named after me.” – Mark Watney
98. “Everything went great right up to the explosion.” – Mark Watney
99. “Mark, please watch your language. Everything you type is being broadcast live all over the world.” – Vincent Kapoor
100. “If ruining the only religious icon I have leaves me vulnerable to Martian , I’ll have to risk it.” – Mark Watney
101. “My *ssh*l* is doing as much to keep me alive as my brain.” – Mark Watney
102. “I didn’t type that! That was Martinez! I stepped away from the console for like 10 seconds!” – Beth Johanssen
103. “Got my first email from Hermes today. NASA’s been limiting direct contact. I guess they’re afraid I’ll say something like, ‘You abandoned me on Mars, you *ssh*l*s!’” – Mark Watney
104. “I might lose my job as an interplanetary voyeur? I guess I’d have to use my master’s degree for something else.” – Mindy Park
105. “Okay. I’ve had my tantrum and now I have to figure out how to stay alive.” – Mark Watney
106. “If I survive this, I’ll tell people I was pissing rocket fuel.” – Mark Watney
107. “You know what!? F*ck this! F*ck this airlock, f*ck that Hab, and f*ck this whole planet!” – Mark Watney
108. “I’m so g*dd*mn sick of it I could puke!” – Mark Watney
109. “I’ll be done. No more getting my hopes up, no more self-delusion, and no more problem-solving. I’ve f*cking had it!” – Mark Watney
110. “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.” – Mark Watney
111. “All I have to do is sit here. The air will leak out and I’ll die.” – Mark Watney
112. “Seriously, this is it! I’ve had it! I’ve got a few minutes before I run out of air and I’ll be damned if I spend them playing Mars’s little game.” – Mark Watney
113. “F*ck you, Mars.” – Mark Watney
114. “Tell Commander Lewis, disco sucks.” – Mark Watney
115. “I blew myself up.” – Mark Watney
116. “What the f*ck? What the f*ck?” – Mark Watney
117. “Are you f*ck*ng kidding me?” – Mark Watney
118. “Should we alert the media?” – Rick Martinez
119. “Hey, there!” – Mark Watney
120. “Look! A pair of boobs!” – Mark Watney
121. “First, first, first!” – Mark Watney
122. “What do you know? I’m in command.” – Mark Watney
123. “This is space. It does not cooperate.” – Mark Watney
124. “Uh—he asked us to call him Captain Blondebeard.” – Mindy Park
125. “Hey don’t get me wrong, I’m not a mama’s boy or anything. It’s totally manly and normal for me to cling to a letter from my mom.” – Mark Watney
126. “If we are going to have a secret project called ‘Elrond,’ then I want my code name to be ‘Glorfindel.’” – Teddy Sanders
127. “My God, Commander, could you have not brought something from this century?” – Mark Watney
128. “Oh, wow. Did everybody hear that? Mark just discovered dirt.” – Rick Martinez
129. “I started the day with some nothin’ tea. Nothin’ tea is easy to make. First, get some hot water, then add nothin.’” – Mark Watney
130. “Did you say 312? Yeah, I’ll just wave to you guys as I go by.” – Mark Watney
131. “It’s kind of silly if you think about it. I’m in my spacesuit on Mars and I’m navigating with 16th-century tools.” – Mark Watney
132. “I am dipping this potato in crushed up Vicodin. And no one can stop me.” – Mark Watney
133. “Maybe I’ll post a consumer review, ‘Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped working, 0/10.’” – Mark Watney
134. “I can’t wait till I have . When I was younger, I had to walk to the rim of a crater. Uphill! In an EVA suit! On Mars, ya little sh*t! Ya hear me? Mars!” – Mark Watney
135. “If I make any mistakes, there’ll be nothing left but the ‘Mark Watney Memorial Crater’ where the Hab once stood.” – Mark Watney
136. “Yeah, I know, it’s a stupid thing to think about but I have a lot of free time.” – Mark Watney
137. “It’s true, you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl.” – Mark Watney
138. “I’m space paparazzi now. The attitude comes with the job.” – Mindy Park
139. “Things didn’t go exactly as planned but I’m not dead, so it’s a win.” – Mindy Park