James S. A. Corey

"She was reaching for supernatural answers when memory and mundanity were enough."

"“Your Dad’s going to be different. But if anything about him is what it used to be? That part’ll be how he felt about you.” “That’s sweet,” Teresa said. “And complete bullshit.” “You don’t know. Until you have a kid, you won’t. I will plant my flag on that one. The love of a parent for their kid is the last thing to go.”"

"Portraits of great war leaders or critical battles that looked flattering, well composed, and balanced always felt like propaganda. Tanaka had spent a lot of time in the halls of power. She’d seen many paintings of great men in uniform staring eagle-eyed into the distance where their future glory lay. She’d seen very few paintings of soldiers with only a ragged tent and a dying fire to hold back the cold nights before some stranger tried to bayonet them in the morning."

"“You make it sound like there’s a later in the game.” Miller’s smile was enigmatic, and it looked a little like sorrow by the time it reached his eyes. “Until death all is life.”"

"“You mean what did you let yourself in for?” “Yeah.” “Too late to turn back now.” “I know. I’m just not feeling great.” “You want bullshit happy mouth noises, or the truth.” “Bullshit happy mouth noises.” “It’s great,” Miller said without missing a beat. “It’s having a long restful sleep full of interesting, vivid dreams.” A cramp ran through Jim’s gut, sharp as a screwdriver. “You’re right. That does sound great,” he said through clenched teeth. “I really think I’m going to like that.”"

"“Optimism is for assholes,” Miller said with a laugh."

"A liberal arts background was a hard thing to overcome, but she was doing great."

"She understood on a deep, animal level that sex was like music or language. It could express anything. Love, yes. Or anger, or bitterness, or despair. It could be a way to grieve or a way to take revenge. It could be a weapon or a nightmare or a solace. Sex was meaningless, and so it could mean anything."

"The several unexamined assumptions in the argument remained unexamined."

"“The second I saw those bastards coming down the street, I knew it was over for me. I’m dead. It’s just a matter of time is all.” “That’s always true,” Lydia said, her mind taken with other matters. “For everyone.”"

"He had been desperate for a narrative, and now that I’d given him one, it seemed unlikely that he would see anything else."

"Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but it is the mother of any number of other things as well: sacrifice and monstrosity and metamorphosis. Necessity is the mother of all necessary things, to coin a tautology."

"She wanted to believe. But she also knew better."

"All the ways they wanted to help her, but never asked how she wanted to be helped."

"He found himself crafting the role of Governor Rittenaur as if he were acting a part in a play. He had come to notice when his own impulses were different from what Governor Rittenaur’s would be, and then bury his own judgment to give space to the requirement of his office. He was a professional impersonator of himself."

"You’re young yet. I’m not. There’s this thing when you get older where you have to make a choice. Everyone does. You have to decide whether you care more about being your best self or your real one. If you’re more loyal to who you ought to be or who you really are."

"He remembered his mother saying The only right you have with anyone in this life is the right to walk away. He thought about his father’s need to frame everything as an epic struggle between himself and the universe."

"He didn’t remember who’d said it, but when he’d been much younger, someone had told him that saving money for an economic collapse was a bad plan. Who knew what scrip would matter and what would just be a number in an account no one cared about? The things that would last were bullets and liquor, not cash. When the apocalypse came, bullets and liquor would be the only currency that mattered."

"“What scares me, Mose. It isn’t fucking it up and dying. What if we fuck up, but we don’t die. What if we fuck it all up and live? We’re at the end of something, sure. Maybe we’re at the beginning of something too. Maybe we make a whole new world. A whole new planet like Earth used to be. Hundreds of generations. Billions of people, that all start here. And we fuck it up for them.” “I don’t understand.” “What if we just go on like people always have? The same bullshit. Give the same bullies and liars power like we did before. Cut all the same corners. Put up with all the same hypocrites. Make everything here into more of the shit that got us here. That seems worse. For me? That’s worse.”"

"The end-of-year celebration was different. It was a nested series of lies. A minefield scattered with gold nuggets, opportunity and disaster in visibly mingled."

"She warned me that raising children would require patience. It’s why I never had any of my own."

"Small moments, unnoticed at the time, change the fate of empires."

"He had a brief but vivid memory of being seven years old at his grandmother’s vineyard in Nortcoor, looking into the night sky and seeing it for the first time as infinity towering above him like God, only worse because it was real."

"Good and evil are constructs lesser beings build to create divisions in places where rigor and intelligence are insufficient. It is a sloppy shorthand, and prone to error."

"He hadn’t thought about it. It was a crisis, and in a crisis you did what needed doing. Stopping to think was a short path to panic. He didn’t have time for that."

"I think some important scientific questions have finally been answered. Alien life exists, and they are assholes."

"“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?”"

"Of all the unthinkable events in his life, the fact that the universe had put him beside this woman felt the most unlikely."