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6025bd2
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All beautiful things should have just a little sorrow about them. Made them seem real.
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James S.A. Corey |
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5b1db67
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During his time as a graduate student, he had done data collection for a study of Pinus contorata. Of all the varieties of pine to rise off Earth, lodgepole pine had been the most robust in low-g environments. His job had been to collect the fallen cones and burn them for the seeds. In the wild, lodgepole pine wouldn't germinate without fire; the resin in the cones encouraged a hotter fire, even when it meant the death of the parental tree...
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James S.A. Corey |
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103b18e
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Choosing to stand by while people kill each other is also an action,
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James S.A. Corey |
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d32ace4
|
Chapter Fourteen: Teresa "So not unnatural at all," Holden said, tipping a little more wine from the bottle into the doctor's glass. "Meaningless term," Cortazar 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." Tiamat's Wrath"
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holden
the-expanse-tiamat-s-wrath
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James S.A. Corey |
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cd45a4b
|
The messages coming back flooded the comm buffers with rage and sorrow, threats of vengeance and offers of aid. Those last were the hardest. New colonies still trying to force their way into local ecosystems so exotic that their bodies could hardly recognize them as life at all, isolated, exhausted, sometimes at the edge of their resources. And what they wanted was to send back help. He listened to their voices, saw the distress in their ey..
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helping-others
humanism
inspirational
refugees
sacrifice
war
war-relief
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James S.A. Corey |
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860179b
|
if you hear hoofbeats in the distance, your first guess is that they're horses, not zebras. And you're hearing hoofbeats and jumping straight to unicorns.
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James S.A. Corey |
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15dcd76
|
Easy to make rules," Emma said. "Easy to make systems with a perfect logic and rigor. All you need to do is leave out the mercy, yeah? Then when you put people into it and they get chewed to nothing, it's the person's fault. Not the rules. Everything we do that's worth shit, we've done with people. Flawed, stupid, lying, rules-breaking people."
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James S.A. Corey |
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222c8be
|
Downtime's easier to enjoy when I know it'll end.
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James S.A. Corey |
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70f8695
|
It had been a failure, but it was a failure he understood, and that made it a victory.
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James S.A. Corey |
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24829eb
|
Just do not pull that fucking trigger. Do you understand what I'm saying? Don't. You will be personally responsible for the deadliest screwup in the history of humankind, and I'm on a ship with Jim fucking Holden, so the bar's not low.
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James S.A. Corey |
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6623f3c
|
It seemed to her that the real sign you were getting old was when you stopped needing to prove you weren't getting old.
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James S.A. Corey |
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39245ef
|
They don't hate us," Bobbie said, her voice tired. "They're afraid of us." "Then why do they act like they hate us?" David's father said with something like triumph. "Because that's what fear looks like when it needs someplace to go."
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James S.A. Corey |
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6a686e9
|
They'd never precisely been friends, but they'd managed to stop the human race from being wiped out by a corporation's self-induced sociopathy and a recovered alien weapon that everyone in human history had mistaken for a moon of Saturn. By that standard, at least, the partnership had been a success.
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James S.A. Corey |
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0daadeb
|
You take care of your tools, your tools take care of you.
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James S.A. Corey |
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227c554
|
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 to..
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James S.A. Corey |
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764b003
|
He's young. He still sleeps sometimes. It's a weakness.
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James S.A. Corey |
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4acf7a5
|
It's a war. Wars aren't like that." "Aren't like what?" Roberts said. "Aren't like stories about wars," Vandercaust answered solemnly. "Stories about wars come after."
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James S.A. Corey |
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fd70f4e
|
I mean, weird, dead alien technology with effects we don't understand sweeping whole ships away without leaving a trace or explanation. That's probably safe to play with, right?
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James S.A. Corey |
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90f552e
|
I told you before that Johnson would be off the board, and he will be. We didn't take him at Tycho, and we'll take him somewhere else. He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time." Rosenfeld looked down at his bulb, his body hunching a degree in submission. Filip had felt his father's victory like it was his own. "Didn't finish reading that book, did you?" Rosenfeld asked mildly."
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James S.A. Corey |
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5976c33
|
The door to the primary power junction was reinforced. A red border was painted around the frame, with warnings in half a dozen languages that all meant Please be careful. There's a lot of things in here that we'll have to fix after they finish killing you.
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James S.A. Corey |
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bcaf876
|
Never heard of 'em." "Yeah, you have, but context is everything, ain't it?" --
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James S.A. Corey |
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d1831d3
|
Owning your own racing ship wasn't even wealth. It was like speciation. It was conspicuous consumption befitting ancient Earth royalty, a pharaoh's pyramid with a reaction drive.
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James S.A. Corey |
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b703eaf
|
What are they going to do about it?" "So far? Get drunk. Yell at each other or at us. Design theoretical judicial systems. Most of them seem to want the whole thing to just go away sot hey can get on with their research." Murtry chuckled. "God bless the eggheads."
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James S.A. Corey |
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50f7d17
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And even then, she hadn't wanted to die. She'd just wanted it to be over. To be free of it all. For the pain and guilt to be over. And the feeling of being trapped. She might have been able to stand all the rest of it, but not the sense of being caught.
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James S.A. Corey |
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d97c891
|
Before Prax had gotten married, he'd seen a dance performance based on neo-Taoist traditions. For the first hour, it had been utterly boring, and then after that, the small movements of arms and legs and torso, shifting together, bending, and falling away, had been entrancing. The Rocinante slid into place beside an extending airlock port with the same beauty Prax had seen in that dance, but made more powerful by the knowledge that instead ..
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James S.A. Corey |
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a9c4fec
|
the only thing she and Tilly had in common was their carbon base.
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James S.A. Corey |
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5b562e0
|
After dinner, Holden took a long, slow tour of his new ship. He opened every door, looked in every closet, turned on every panel, and read every readout. He stood in engineering next to the fusion reactor and closed his eyes, getting used to the almost subliminal vibration she made. If something ever went wrong with it, he wanted to feel it in his bones before any warning ever sounded.
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spaceship
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James S.A. Corey |
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810bbc1
|
when the lights went out. It wasn't just the lights. So many things about his physical situation changed all at once that his hindbrain couldn't keep up. It told him to be nauseated just in case he'd been poisoned. It was working with fifty-million-year-old response algorithms.
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James S.A. Corey |
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97509b7
|
He'd turned away from a life on basic to live in the stars, or if not the stars, at least the rocks that floated free in the night sky.
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James S.A. Corey |
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cdf0db5
|
Reputation never has very much to do with reality. 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. Chrisjen Avasarala
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reputation-quotes
science-fiction
the-expanse
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James S.A. Corey |
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6b17d07
|
Jim, they make these things not to be fiddled with. The civilian version of this device fuses itself into a solid lump of silicon if it thinks it's being tampered with. Who knows what the military version of the fail-safe is? Drop the magnetic bottle in the reactor? Turn us into a supernova?
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female-engineers
space-technology
stem-girls
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James S.A. Corey |
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a2c96be
|
Holden was starting to feel like they were all monkeys playing with a microwave. Push a button, a light comes on inside, so it's a light. Push a different button and stick your hand inside, it burns you, so it's a weapon. Learn to open and close the door, it's a place to hide things. Never grasping what it actually did, and maybe not even having the framework necessary to figure it out. No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.
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James S.A. Corey |
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81ca33b
|
Professionalism," Fred said. "Building rapport. Establishing trust. She's halfway convinced him that whoever he was working for was willing to crack the station open with him still inside it. Once he's come around, we'll own him. That man will tell us everything we ask and then try to remember something we didn't think to dig for if we give him time. No one's as zealous as a convert." Holden crossed his arms. "I think you're overlooking the..
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James S.A. Corey |
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d66160a
|
She felt that politics was the second most evil thing humanity had ever invented, just after lutefisk. There
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James S.A. Corey |
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66113e8
|
Holden was starting to feel like they were all monkeys playing with a microwave. Push a button, a light comes on inside, so it's a light. Push a different button and stick your hand inside, it burns you, so it's a weapon. Learn to open and close the door, it's a place to hide things. Never grasping what it actually did, and maybe not even having the framework necessary to figure it out. No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito. So here the ..
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human-nature
humanity
microwave
monkeys
shiny
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James S.A. Corey |
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863e437
|
Stupidity was usually a lesser crime than vigilantism.
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James S.A. Corey |
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1d6571d
|
The deep human instinct to come together in crisis. To take care of each other. In its best light, it was what made humanity human. But he also had the dark suspicion that it was a kind of bargaining. Look, universe, see how kind and gentle and nice I am? Don't let the hammer fall on me. Even if it was only grief and fear, he'd take it. Anything that helped them all treat each other well.
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James S.A. Corey |
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ed9808e
|
How many times can you get yourself massively irradiated before it catches up with you?" "At least once more?"
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James S.A. Corey |
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4a7c2a9
|
All through human history, being a moral person and not being pulled into the dramatics and misbehavior of others had caused intelligent people grief. Dawes
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James S.A. Corey |
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c1f70a1
|
Intellectually, he knew that he was falling sunward, heading in from the Jovian system toward the Belt. In a week, the sun would be close to twice the size it was now, and it would still be insignificant. In a context of such immensity, of distances and speeds so far above any meaningful human experience, it seemed like nothing should matter. He should be agreeing that he hadn't been there when God made the mountains, whether it meant the o..
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James S.A. Corey |
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e9199bf
|
There was no better way to seem trustworthy than to be liked by a dog, and there was no better way to convince a dog to like you than bribery.
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James S.A. Corey |
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38635c3
|
Saying 'no problem' is a sure sign that everything is about to go terribly wrong," Han said."
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James S.A. Corey |
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c362f13
|
So how did you wind up joining the Rebellion?" "An old guy and a kid were looking for a ride and I needed the money," Han said. "After that, it was just bad luck."
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James S.A. Corey |
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25a5f41
|
There aren't any new starts," Bobbie said. "All the new ones pack the old ones along with them. If we ever really started fresh, it'd mean not having a history anymore. I don't know how to do that."
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James S.A. Corey |