James S. A. Corey

"Time for more smiling lies. More veiled threats. More—and he used the word as an epithet—diplomacy."

"Teresa seemed older than adolescent Jim had been, both more knowledgeable about the universe and angrier with it. Maybe the two went hand in hand."

"It also meant that their reaching out to the artifact had gotten it to reach back. Her experiment was working. She’d expected success to feel less like fear."

"“What we’re doing here is bigger than politics.” “I know,” he said. “I just keep hoping the politicians see it too.”"

"The dysfunctions and idiosyncrasies of childhood became the self-evident norms of adulthood."

"Anyone could die at any time, and the universe didn’t give a shit."

"Every miracle we’ve pulled off, we’ve done it using primates. Just because we’re capable of mind-blowing wonders doesn’t mean we aren’t still sex-and-murder machines. The organism doesn’t change."

"Owning your mistakes meant not making them twice."

"“Seems like the right tentacle ain’t keeping track of what the left tentacle’s up to,” Amos said."

"“I can’t see how this all plays out.” “Sure you do. Everyone dies. That’s always been how it is. Only question now is whether we can find some way to not all go at once.” “If we do, then civilization dies. Everything humanity has ever done goes away.” “Well, at least there won’t be anyone who misses it,” Amos said, and sighed. “You’re overthinking this, Cap’n. You got now and you got the second your lights go out. Meantime is the only time there is. All that matters is what we do during it.” “I just want to go out knowing that things will be okay without me. That it all keeps going.” “That you’re not the one who dropped the ball.” “Or maybe,” Amos said, “you’re not that important and it ain’t up to you to fix the universe?” “You always know how to cheer me up.”"

"This was a new variation, but that was all. She wanted to believe that, and like anything she fund herself wanting to be true, she forced herself to double-check it."

"Instead of actual experiential reports, Tanaka and her team gave versions of their own. Elvi had been in academics long enough to recognize when someone was glossing over data and skipping straight to interpretation. It almost always meant they were avoiding something they found unpalatable."

"“When we get out,” she said. “Not if. When. We’re going to need a plan. If every ship just bolts off on its own, we’ll lose contact. They shouldn’t know where we went, but we should. At the very least, we should have a record of who went where. This every-man-for-himself-and-God-against-all shit’s romantic, but we have to plan for something past just this.”"

"“We’ll get him,” Alex said. “We’ll always get him back.” “Sure we will. Until the time we don’t,” she said. “It’s like this for everyone. There’s always going to be a last time, eventually.”"

"“The high consul is a very wise, very thoughtful man,” he said. “I have perfect faith that—” “No. Stop. ‘Perfect faith’ really tells me everything I need to know,” Holden said. “You think this is a gentle, bloodless conquest, don’t you?” “It is, to the degree that you allow it to be.” “I was there for the war Duarte started to cover his tracks. I was there for the starving years afterward. Your empire’s hands look a lot cleaner when you get to dictate where history begins and what parts of it don’t count.”"

"Nothing degraded morale like the sense that the potential for excellence was being denied."

"The universe owed her a little slice of luck like that."

"Every revolution needed its mad bombers, apparently."

"“‘The predictable limits of a conceptual framework,’” Bobbie said. A phrase from her classroom on Olympus Mons. “It’s always where to hit the enemy. Whoever they turn out to be. When I learned how to do things like this, we were thinking about Earthers and pirates.” Katria laughed. “When I taught myself how to do this, I was thinking of people like you. Strange how the wheel turns.”"

"Her heart was pounding. Her muscles ached. She’d just killed two of the enemy. There would always be a little something—that tug on her humanity that came from doing violence. There was a satisfaction too. It didn’t mean she was a good woman or a bad one. It meant she was a Marine."

"“All right,” Bobbie said. “New orders. Don’t die until I say so.”"

"He lifted the gun. “Wait!” Singh said. “Wait. Do you believe all that? About what killing me is supposed to achieve?” “I am an officer of the Laconian Empire, Governor Singh. I believe what I’m told to believe.”"

"The fight for survival made everything either resilient or forgotten."

"“The founding impulse of Freehold is sticking it to the government.” “Loses some of its shine after you get elected.”"

"The people who have power over you are weak too. They shit and bleed and worry that their children don’t love them anymore. They’re embarrassed by the stupid things they did when they were young that everyone else has forgotten. And so they’re vulnerable. We all define ourselves by the people around us, because that’s the kind of monkey we are. We can’t transcend it. So when they watch you, they hand you the power to change what they are too."

"The universe wasn’t just stranger than you knew, it was stranger than you could know."

"There had to have been a moment when this had become the new normal."

"Alex worried about that. Jillian was mean as a snake. When he’d told Bobbie that, she’d responded, I just make sure she never runs out of mice. He still didn’t know quite what that meant."

"“Primary mission is fucked, but secondary is a win.” “A moral victory, I guess,” Bobbie sighed. “You know who talks about moral victories?” Jillian asked as she floated out of the room. “The team that lost.”"

"Routine was what kept the darkness at bay, when anything did."

"Growing older was a falling away of everything that didn’t matter. And a deepening appreciation of all the parts that were important enough to stay."

"“I don’t know what the win look like.” “Well, for me, it looks like dying with the knowledge that humanity’s a little bit better off than it would have been if I’d never been born. A little freer. A little kinder. A little smarter. That the bullies and bastards and sadists got their teeth into a few less people because of me. That’s got to be enough.”"

"“How to achieve a more robust homeostasis. Just because it’s difficult to do doesn’t make the principal science unsolvable.” “So not unnatural at all,” Holden said, tipping a little more wine from the bottle into the doctor’s glass. “Meaningless term,” Cortázar said. “Humans arose inside nature. We’re natural. Everything we do is natural. The whole idea that we are different in category is either sentimental or religious. Irrelevant from a scientific perspective.” “So if we get to a place that we can all live forever, that’s not unnatural? Holden sounded genuinely curious. Cortázar leaned in toward the prisoner, gesturing with his left hand while he swirled his glass in his right. “The only limits on us are what we can do. It’s perfectly natural to seek personal benefit. It’s perfectly natural to give advantages to your own offspring and withhold them from others. It’s perfectly natural to kill your enemies. That’s not even outlier behavior. That’s all in the middle of the bell curve all the time.”"

"“The important thing is that we get good data. One person. Lots of people. All the same. But bad experimental design? That’s what sin really is,” Cortázar slurred. “That’s not me either. Nature eats babies all the time.”"

"“Sorry,” Bobby said…“I’m pissed at you right now and it’s not your fault.” “What can I stop not doin’ so it ain’t my fault anymore?”"

"What you’re really doing is trying to win back what you’ve lost by going all in. It’s shitty poker, and even worse as a battle strategy."

"The bar was worse than shitty. Shitty had character. The place was generic. Fake stone meant to echo a tunnel on Ceres or Pallas marked with graffiti to make it look edgy until you noticed that the pattern of it repeated every couple meters. The appearance of counterculture as churned out by a corporate designer."

"Duarte was a thoughtful, educated, civilized man and a murderer. He was charming and funny and a little melancholy and, as far as Holden could tell, completely unaware of his own monstrous ambition. Like a religious fanatic, the man really believed that everything he’d done was justified by his goal in doing it."

"This was the problem with thousand-year Reichs. They came and they went like fireflies."

"She was rejoicing and mourning at the same time. And also feeling the deep unease that came from the reminder that being familiar wasn’t the same as being understood."

"Fashion never stopped. It was one of many things Naomi was pleased that age allowed her not to care about anymore."

"It had seemed like a kind of magnanimity at the time. It looked more like necessity now."

"Evolution was a paste-and-baling-wire process that came up with half-assed solutions like pushing teeth through babies’ gums and menstruation. Survival of the fittest was a technical term that covered a lot more close-enough-is-close-enough than actual design."

"I’m going to go obsessively run diagnostics on systems I know are solid so I can feel like I have control of something."

"Nature was beautiful, wherever she found it. And it was cruel. She didn’t know why she kept expecting humanity to be different. Why she pretended the same rules that applied to mountain lions and parasitic wasps didn’t also constrain her. Red in tooth and claw, and at every level. In the Bible, even angels murdered humanity’s babies when God asked them to."

"It was the single central argument that the universe had made to her through her whole life, and she was only now seeing it clearly: Wars never ended because one side was defeated. They ended because the enemies were reconciled. Anything else was just a postponement of the next round of violence."

"That was the thing about hubris. It only became clear in retrospect."

"The chime rang, calling them all to the dining room like the most privileged cattle in the universe."

"Holden’s a decent person. Decent people have trouble with murdering children."

"“Are you sure it was him?” Teresa asked. “Provable? No. Silly to assume anything different? Yes. At this point I’d need evidence that it wasn’t Duarte before I’d entertain it seriously. I hear hoofbeats, I’m still thinking horses at this point.”"