James S.A. Corey Quotes

#1. We all grieve in our own ways," Avasarala said. "For what it's worth, you'll never kill enough people to keep your platoon from dying. No more than I can save enough people that one of them will be Charanpal.

James S.A. Corey

#2. No rest for the wicked, no peace for the good.

James S.A. Corey

#3. Things changed, and they didn't change back. But sometimes they got better.

James S.A. Corey

#4. Holden shot him in the throat. Somewhere in his brain stem, Detective Miller nodded in approval.

James S.A. Corey

#5. Jesus," he said. "What scares the OPA?

James S.A. Corey

#6. Dammit," Holden said after he'd killed the connection. "You ever get the sense that the universe is out to get you?" "Sometimes I get the sense that the universe is out to get you," Amos said with a grin. "It's fun to watch.

James S.A. Corey

#7. Humanity hadn't changed, but it had. The venality and the nobility, the cruelty and the grace. They were all still there. It was just the particulars he felt shifting away from under him.

James S.A. Corey

#8. Choosing to stand by while people kill each other is also an action,

James S.A. Corey

#9. Here's the thing," Amos said. "If you did go in there, you might feel like you had to do something. And then I might feel like I had to do something. And then we'd all be doing things, and we'd all wind up having a worse day, just in general.

James S.A. Corey

#10. In Amos' experience the more dangerous any two people were, the more carefully polite their social interactions tended to be.

James S.A. Corey

#11. To suddenly be so hurt in so many different places at once left her dazed and with a sort of directionless anger. It wasn't fair that a person could be hurt so much.

James S.A. Corey

#12. So that was the story of who she was. The one who'd been too sensitive. Too weak.

James S.A. Corey

#13. I'm saying let's go see if we can find some horses or zebras before we start a unicorn hunt.

James S.A. Corey

#14. If Miller had brought him all this way just to let him die in an abandoned train car, it was the longest prank setup in history.

James S.A. Corey

#15. Amos found what I'm pretty sure was the most expensive hooker I've ever seen.

James S.A. Corey

#16. Even on Earth, there were people with money, and then there were people with money.

James S.A. Corey

#17. Epithets like that are an attempt to dehumanize a group so that you won't feel as bad about killing them.

James S.A. Corey

#18. How many captains of stolen ships did it take to equal one disgraced UN official? That could tie a courtroom up for a few decades.

James S.A. Corey

#19. In the middle column, the colony ships she and her fleet had taken: the Bedyadat Jadida, out of Luna. The John Galt and the Mark Watney, out of Mars. The

James S.A. Corey

#20. Meditating deeply so that she could really, clearly experience being angry and lonesome and hurt and horror-struck never seemed as good as a strong gin and tonic and another hour of work.

James S.A. Corey

#21. But it is only a machine. It doesn't think. It follows instructions. If we learn how to alter that programming, then we become the architects of that change.

James S.A. Corey

#22. now he was about to be killed because of yet another petty human with more power than sense. It didn't seem fair.

James S.A. Corey

#23. Outside, the city glowed, the violence and bustle made calm and beautiful by even such a small distance. The wail of the sirens and angry blat of the security alerts became a kind of music there, transformed by the mystical act of passing above waves.

James S.A. Corey

#24. If Fred is showing this to you, Holden, know that your home planet appreciates your service. Also try not to put your dick in this. It's fucked enough already.

James S.A. Corey

#25. Apocalyptic explosions, dead reactors, terrorists, mass murder, death-slugs, and now a blindness plague. This is a terrible planet. We should not have come here.

James S.A. Corey

#26. Eros supported a population of one and a half million, a little more than Ceres had in visitors at any given time.

James S.A. Corey

#27. I can get you some stimulants if you'd like, but there's no coffee." "Right," Holden said. "No coffee. This is a terrible, terrible planet. Show me how to make everyone better.

James S.A. Corey

#28. We're all traitors now." "Ha!" the old lady said. "Only if we lose.

James S.A. Corey

#29. GOODY. MY SPLEEN IS COLLAPSING. HURRY UP.

James S.A. Corey

#30. He would live to see humanity's spread to the stars.

James S.A. Corey

#31. Heroism is a label most people get for doing shit they'd never do if they were really thinking about it.

James S.A. Corey

#32. What have we got?" Ashford said. "Short form."
"It's fucking weird, sir," Chan said.

James S.A. Corey

#33. You're a tough guy, but I'm a nightmare wrapped in the apocalypse.

James S.A. Corey

#34. Whoever screws up last loses. Whoever screws up second to last wins. That's what war is.

James S.A. Corey

#35. The dog-faced, small-cocked, hypocrite bastard son of a weasel and a whore bowed and escorted his wife from the house.

James S.A. Corey

#36. No one can blather on like a holy man with a trapped audience. Well, maybe a politician.

James S.A. Corey

#37. There were going to be plenty of them who would have been just as opposed to the Republic. Trust the wrong one, and they'd all be fed straight to the Empire. Leia. Luke. All of them. It was the nature of the game.

James S.A. Corey

#38. Those kids? They're illegal, but they don't just vanish, not

James S.A. Corey

#39. I have killed, but I am not a killer because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren't afraid.

James S.A. Corey

#40. What did you do?" Fred asked. "There was a button," Holden said. "I pushed it." "Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn't it?" "But

James S.A. Corey

#41. Fred's vacuum-rated armor protected him from the smell of viscera, but it reported it to him as a slight increase in atmospheric methane levels. The stench of death reduced to a data point.

James S.A. Corey

#42. God save us all from good-looking men.

James S.A. Corey

#43. The elegance and functionality of the structure lay out before him, as beautiful and simple and effective as a leaf or a root cluster. To have something so much like the fruits of evolution, but designed by human minds, was

James S.A. Corey

#44. When the crisis comes, we all pull together naturally. It's easy then. It's when things drag on too long that we have to make the effort. We need to make sure everyone sees we're all in this together.

James S.A. Corey

#45. An idealist. The most dangerous kind of man there was. And

James S.A. Corey

#46. So there was this unlicensed brothel down in sector 18. We went thinking we'd be hauling fifteen, twenty people in. More, maybe. Got there, and the place was stripped to the stone,

James S.A. Corey

#47. Martian Congressional Republic Navy.

James S.A. Corey

#48. Fuck the Inners, and fuck their magic Jell-O ... Just wearing their fancy arm probably turns you into an asshole,

James S.A. Corey

#49. That man's asshole must be tight enough right now to bend space.

James S.A. Corey

#50. Black hair draped down the side of her face.

James S.A. Corey

#51. Nothing better in the world than getting a job the day after your ass gets canned.

James S.A. Corey

#52. Don't," Naomi said, letting him go, "pull your gun on anyone." "They have guns." "Guns plural. You have gun singular, which is why you will keep yours in your holster, or you'll do this by yourself." That's

James S.A. Corey

#53. Keel-mounted rail gun," Alex said with a grin. " - that scream of overcompensating for tiny, tiny penises, but might prove useful.

James S.A. Corey

#54. You know," he said, "you have a really weird relationship with treason.

James S.A. Corey

#55. When you got a nail to drive, use the fucking hammer.

James S.A. Corey

#56. The beautiful thing about losing your illusions, he thought, was that you got to stop pretending.

James S.A. Corey

#57. It didn't blow up last time," Han said. "Maybe it won't blow up this time, either.

James S.A. Corey

#58. Well", Holden said, his voice grim, "we have a major problem. We're out of coffee."
"We still got beer," Amos said.
"Yes," Holden said. "But beer is not coffee.

James S.A. Corey

#59. It was the widest concerted attack ever. Hundreds of ships on at least four sides. Dozens of stations, millions of lives. Among the stars, it didn't stand out.

James S.A. Corey

#60. He'd never been to military pilot school, but he knew that years of training had compartmentalized Alex's brain into two halves: piloting problems and, secondarily, everything else.

James S.A. Corey

#61. The advantage of being in command of all the guns was that no matter how nicely you asked for something, it was still an order.

James S.A. Corey

#62. By not elaborating, he'd sort of told the truth. The fact was weirdly disturbing.

James S.A. Corey

#63. Miller had thought hope was dead. He'd thought all his chances had been played, and then, like a bitch, it all hauled itself up out of the grave. Get

James S.A. Corey

#64. Son of a f**king whore," Avasarala said, loud enough to cut through the background buzz of conversations.
The crowd turned to her. She was looking at her hand terminal.
"What's a whore, Daddy?"
"It's a kind of frost, honey," Prax said. "What's going on?

James S.A. Corey

#65. Good, because I don't use sex as a weapon," Bobbie said. "I use weapons as weapons.

James S.A. Corey

#66. I think we need to leave now," Holden said, fear making the words come fast. "Like now now. Not later now.

James S.A. Corey

#67. The problem with living with miracles was that they made everything seem plausible.

James S.A. Corey

#68. First off, get your shit together. Panic doesn't help. It never helps. Deep breaths, figure this out, make the right moves. Fear is the mind-killer. Ha. Geek.

James S.A. Corey

#69. He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time.

James S.A. Corey

#70. A bicycle?" Amos leaned on the breakfast bar. "Sure. They don't need fuel, they don't get sick. Most of the repairs, you can handle on your own. You're looking for post-apocalyptic transportation, bikes are the way to go.

James S.A. Corey

#71. She noticed Amos watching her. He had a dopey grin on his face.
"Seriously. Now?" she said. "We're talking about your captain going off to his death, and all that's going through your head right now is 'Ooh, boobies!

James S.A. Corey

#72. Every now and then a green dot shifted to yellow. A soldier down, their armored suits detecting the injuries or death that rendered them combat ineffective. Combat ineffective. Such a nice euphemism for one of his kids bleeding out.

James S.A. Corey

#73. Also, Nathan, if you're listening, and I assume you are, I'm the best and only friend you've got. Give her permission to share what she has, or I swear to God I'll have you turning tricks out of a prefab shed on the side of the highway. I'm trying to save humanity here.

James S.A. Corey

#74. Han had been in a thousand places like it, all across the galaxy. Some had been as large as star systems, others as small as a back room in a cantina. They were the niches of the universe ... They were violent places, and they were joyful, and they didn't last.

James S.A. Corey

#75. I don't kill children," she said. "Not even when it's the right thing to do.

James S.A. Corey

#76. She preferred the times when she could pretend that she was in a gravity well to the little reminders that she was the puppet of acceleration and inertia.

James S.A. Corey

#77. and much of what she came to understand was that humans were domestic animals like dogs and cats. They responded poorly to threats and well to a gentle building of trust.

James S.A. Corey

#78. person can fail the people they love just by being who they are. I'm

James S.A. Corey

#79. Singh in computational biology held forth on her theory of the protomolecule as a Guzman-style quantum computer one night over dinner, and when Kibushi used the information without citing her, she snuck into the showers at the gymnasium and beat him to death with a ceramic workbench cap.

James S.A. Corey

#80. I'm an engineer," Gareth said, spitting out the word so violently it gave him a degree of spin. "Did eight years on Tycho Station! I'm not going to get used like a fucking technician.

James S.A. Corey

#81. It was like solving a complex math puzzle without any promise that an optimal solution existed.

James S.A. Corey

#82. It was a small place with bulbs of alcohol, chocolate, coffee, and tea all set with temperature controls in the nipple, so the uniformly tepid drinks could come out anywhere from almost boiling to just this side of ice. The

James S.A. Corey

#83. Fred shook his head again, this time giving Holden the vaguely frightened look of a man who wanted to back slowly out of the room.

James S.A. Corey

#84. No one lived forever. But you fought for every minute you could get. Bought a little more with a lot of hard work.

James S.A. Corey

#85. The sex," he said. "I just wanted to make sure that we were okay. That things were all right between us."
"Well," she said, "orgasm does release a lot of oxytocin, so I'm probably more fond of you than before.

James S.A. Corey

#86. Once is never. Twice is always.

James S.A. Corey

#87. This kind of thing requires secrecy to function, so exposing all the secrets hurts them in the end. It's the only way this really, permanently stops.

James S.A. Corey

#88. He is, however," Amos continued, "keeping a constant rail gun lock on the Israel's reactor."
Holden ran his fingers through his hair. "So not too generous, then."
"Say pretty please, but carry a one-kilo slug of tungsten accelerated to a detectable percentage of c.

James S.A. Corey

#89. No one really appreciated how much of security work was just trying to keep things under control for a few more minutes, giving everyone involved in the crisis a little time to think it all through.

James S.A. Corey

#90. Doors and corners are always dangerous, because you're moving into something without being sure what's there. By the time you see the enemy, you're exposed to them." "Sir?" Havelock

James S.A. Corey

#91. Soren's smirk was of the psychic variety; his face didn't change at all.

James S.A. Corey

#92. There was an old joke. Miller didn't remember where he'd heard it. Girl's at her own father's funeral, meets this really cute guy. They talk, hit it off, but he leaves before she can get his number. Girl doesn't know how to track the guy down. So a week later, she kills her mom. Big laugh.

James S.A. Corey

#93. My name is James Holden," he said, "and my ship, the Canterbury, was just destroyed by a warship with stealth technology and what appear to be parts stamped with Martian navy serial numbers. Data stream to follow.

James S.A. Corey

#94. her sensor package could track a golf ball and hit it with a torpedo from half the solar system away." "Oh,

James S.A. Corey

#95. He didn't think about raising his assault weapon; it was just there, coughing out return fire like an extension of his will.

James S.A. Corey

#96. He hadn't been aware he'd felt wrong until he suddenly felt right again.

James S.A. Corey

#97. The second corpse sat up and then stood, clutching her belly. A man stepped into the frame, a gun in his hand, healing her by sucking the bullet from her guts. They argued, grew calm, parted peaceably.

James S.A. Corey

#98. And the moral high ground is a lovely place," Marwick said, as if he were agreeing. "It won't stop a missile, though.

James S.A. Corey

#99. They'd made a plan, and so far everything was more or less going the way they'd hoped. The thought left Holden increasingly terrified.

James S.A. Corey

#100. The man starts wars all the fucking time, only this time, when I needed a little conflict? Now he's the fucking peacemaker.

James S.A. Corey