|
fc9ce6f
|
Everyone too busy trying to survive to spend any time creating something new.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
47b53bf
|
You're cranky because you're tired," Amos said. "You got that I-have-to-save-everyone hangup, so I make it that you haven't slept in about two days. But listening to people bitch? Yeah, that's sorta your job. It's why you make the big money." "We make the same money." "Then I guess you're doing it for the fame and glory." "I hate you," Holden said."
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
3247427
|
Every empire grows until its reach exceeds its grasp.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
e2edb77
|
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 |
|
aef3cc6
|
GOODY. MY SPLEEN IS COLLAPSING. HURRY UP.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
7a72ca7
|
She'd stopped looking tired a while ago and had moved on to whatever tired turns into when it became a lifestyle.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
6a2a5d8
|
What happened?" she asked. "The landing pad blew up." "Oh," she said. And then, "do they do that?" "No. No, they really don't."
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
bd95861
|
Theological anthropology is a lot simpler when humans are the only ones with souls.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
a708096
|
Alex's experience of real family--of blood relations--was more like having a lot of people who had all wound up on the same mailing list without knowing quite why they signed up for it.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
89ffb22
|
It's a simple complex system. That's the technical name for it. Because it's simple, it's prone to cascades, and because it's complex, you can't predict what's going to fail. Or how. It's computationally impossible.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
1509ed3
|
Point of clarification," Alex said, raising his hand. "We have an apocalypse comin'? Was that a thing we knew about?" "Venus," Avasarala said. "Oh. That apocalypse," Alex said, lowering his hand. "Right."
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
72b6381
|
And ... and what is civilisation if it isn't people talking to each other over a goddamned beer?
|
|
civilisation
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
42adff5
|
The pleasantries were just ritual, but ritual was important. In Amos' experience the more dangerous any two people were, the more carefully polite their social interactions tended to be. The loud, blustering ones were trying to get the other guy to back down. They wanted to stay out of a fight. The quiet ones were figuring out how to win it.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
5a8d8b3
|
The abyss above him shone with unflickering stars. One of the dots of light was Earth. He didn't know which one.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
7651ee5
|
I don't believe war ever does. It's a madness that's in our nature. Sometimes it recurs; sometimes it subsides." "Sounds like a disease." "The herpes simplex of the species?"
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
0a01412
|
Stupid. Shortsighted. A man born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been. Miller's
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
d485907
|
Well, you've got a full load of torpedoes and bullets, three Martian warships trailing you, one angry old lady in tea withdrawal, and a Martian Marine who could probably kill you with your own teeth. What do you do?
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
5b9cc9d
|
Desperate psychotic people do desperate psychotic things when they're exposed. I refuse to grant them immunity from exposure out of fear of their reaction. When you do, the desperate psychos wind up in charge.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
a9999f1
|
No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
3382c11
|
She'd always found a deep comfort in praying. A profound sense of connection to something infinitely larger than herself. Her atheist friends called it awe in the face of an infinite cosmos. She called it God. That they might be talking about the same thing didn't bother her at all. It was possible she was hurling her prayers at a cold and unfeeling universe that didn't hear them, but that wasn't how it felt. Science had given mankind many ..
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
b2efe57
|
If you start feeling wonderful and powerful and like you've seen the face of God, you're having a euphoric attack.
|
|
face-of-god
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
175143c
|
Distributed responsibility is the problem. One person gives the order, another carries it out. One can say they didn't pull the trigger, the other that they were just doing what they were told, and everyone lets themselves off the hook.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
0e70c2d
|
Say what you will about organized crime, at least it's organized.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
c209c28
|
Melba thought with a touch of pity.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
370737a
|
Annie," Tilly said. "If I wanted to suck vile fluids out of a flaccid and indifferent tube, I'd have stayed on Earth with my husband."
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
27a4fdf
|
The pachinko machines lit them blue and green and shrieked in artificial delight.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
6d92df9
|
Tachi's galley had a full kitchen and a table with room for twelve. It also had a full-size coffeepot that could brew forty cups of coffee in less than five minutes whether the ship was in zero g or under a five-g burn. Holden said a silent prayer of thanks for bloated military budgets and pressed the brew button. He had to restrain himself from stroking the stainless steel cover while it made gentle percolating noises.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
261cf4b
|
I still feel haunted,' she said. 'I thought it would go away. I thought if I faced it, it would all go away.' 'It doesn't go away. Ever. But you get better at it.' 'At what?' 'At being haunted,' Avasarala said.
|
|
bobbi-draper
chrisjen-avasarala
haunted
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
6c5f9b6
|
History, Michio believed, was a long series of surprises that seemed inevitable in retrospect.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
27b1dcf
|
History is made up of people recovering from the last disaster,
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
b963671
|
God, save me from temperance," Tilly said. "You haven't seen a party till you get a group of Anglicans and Catholics trying to beat each other to the bottom of a bottle." "Now, that's not nice, Mrs Fagan," Father Michel said. "I've never met an Anglican that could keep up with me."
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
2087c14
|
All of human civilization had been built out of the ruins of what had come before. Life itself was a grand chemical improvisation that began with the simplest replicators and grew and collapsed and grew again. Catastrophe was just one part of what always happened. It was a prelude to what came next. "You"
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
100f65f
|
There were two sides fighting--that was true enough--but they weren't the inner planets versus the Belters. They were the people who thought it was a good idea to kill people who looked or acted differently against the people who didn't.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
775528d
|
Reputation never has very much to do with reality," she said. "I could name half a dozen paragons of virtue that are horrible, small-souled, evil people. And some of the best men I know, you'd walk out of the room if you heard their names. No one on the screen is who they are when you breathe their air." --
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
0d1b713
|
Nothing with meat inside it could outrun metal and silicon.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
084cd53
|
The usual state of nature is recovering from the last disaster," she said. It was a truism of ecological biologists, and she said it the way a religious person might pray. To make sense of what she saw. To comfort herself. To give the world some sense of purpose or meaning. Species rose in an environment, and that environment changed. It was the nature of the universe, as true here as it had been on Earth."
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
33febfa
|
Things changed, and they didn't change back. But sometimes they got better.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
2c26572
|
You use a welding rig to weld things. You use a gun to shoot things. You use a Bobbie Draper to fuck a bunch of bad guys permanently up.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
dcd9e67
|
I have killed, but I am not a killer because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren't afraid.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
6f87ba1
|
Anyone can kill a planet from orbit," Holden replied. "You don't even need bombs. Just push anvils out the airlock. That thing out there could kill... Shit. Anything."
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
06c77ce
|
Avasarala laughed at that. "True. But if he's sending his hired killer to Earth, we--" "Wait, what?" "If Holden was--" "Forget Holden. You called me his hired killer. Is that how you guys think of me? The killer on Holden's payroll?" Avasarala frowned. "You're not?" "Well, mostly I'm a mechanic. But the idea that the UN has a file on me somewhere that lists me as the Rocinante's killer? That's kind of awesome."
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
58a89bf
|
Don't let things sit for too long. It's always tempting to just ignore the things that aren't actually on fire just at the moment, but then you're also committing to spend your time putting out fires.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
a8f7646
|
What have we got?" Ashford said. "Short form." "It's fucking weird, sir," Chan said."
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |
|
5e79f17
|
Realizing you've got shit on your fingers is the first step toward washing your hands.
|
|
|
James S.A. Corey |