1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
3691
3692
3693
3694
3695
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| a9c4fec | the only thing she and Tilly had in common was their carbon base. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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. | spaceship | James S.A. Corey | |
| 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. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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 | reputation-quotes science-fiction the-expanse | James S.A. Corey | |
| 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? | female-engineers space-technology stem-girls | James S.A. Corey | |
| 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. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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.. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| d66160a | She felt that politics was the second most evil thing humanity had ever invented, just after lutefisk. There | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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 .. | human-nature humanity microwave monkeys shiny | James S.A. Corey | |
| 863e437 | Stupidity was usually a lesser crime than vigilantism. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| ed9808e | How many times can you get yourself massively irradiated before it catches up with you?" "At least once more?" | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 858db61 | War without end. | war | James S. A. Corey | |
| 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 | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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.. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 38635c3 | Saying 'no problem' is a sure sign that everything is about to go terribly wrong," Han said." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 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." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 1b87ad0 | It didn't blow up last time," Han said. "Maybe it won't blow up this time, either." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 81161ef | He stretched, ate his last bite of fungal curds, drank the dregs of something not entirely unlike coffee, and headed out to keep peace in wartime. | hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy reference | James S.A. Corey | |
| 415beaf | It's always been like this, he thinks. From when Moses saw the promised land that he could never enter, people have been on their deathbeds just wanting to see what happens next. He wonders if that's what makes the promised land holy: that you can see it but you can't quite reach it. The grass is always greener on the other side of personal extinction. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 97c07f4 | But pacifism only works when your enemy has a conscience. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| c3f4b7a | We're little people in big times, yeah? | James S.A. Corey | ||
| c108514 | I'm not sure dying free is as attractive when it stops being rhetorical. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 01d8ceb | I've always rejected the great-man idea. The belief that human history was formed by singular individuals instead of broad social forces? Romantic, but ..." He waved a hand vaguely, like he was stirring fog. "Demographic trends. Economic cycles. Technological progress. All much more powerful predictors than any one person. And yet here I am." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 2c859f0 | it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out-- One hundred and thirteen times a second, nothing answers and it reaches out. It is not conscious, though parts of it are. There are structures within it that were once separate organisms; aboriginal, evolved, and complex. It is designed to improvise, to use what is there and then move on. Good enough is good enough, and so the artifacts are ignored or adapted. The conscious parts.. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 0fee174 | The margins of the space were bright without illuminating anything or casting shadows, sharp and terrible. It reminded her of the way schizophrenics and people suffering migraines would describe light as assaulting and dangerous. | light migraine schizophrenia space | James S.A. Corey | |
| a0eb183 | Knowing that all you can give isn't enough is its own burden. | knowing | James S.A. Corey | |
| d961f2d | The ancient, animal story, the same whether it was on a spinning rock surrounded by hard vacuum or the stamp-sized chimpanzee preserves on Earth. Even in the Belt, youth brought invulnerability, immortality, the unshakable conviction that for you, things would be different. The laws of physics would cut you a break, the missiles would never hit, the air would never hiss out into nothing. Maybe for other people--the patched-together fighting.. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 9afb685 | It wasn't as though they had a second Earth to use as a control. History itself was a massive n = 1 study, irreproducible. It was what made it so difficult to learn from. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| b7e106b | Your empire's hands look a lot cleaner when you get to dictate where history begins, and what parts of it count. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| bb5d9b9 | We're not anarchists," she said. "We have goals. We want to end the Empire." "And replace it with what? "You know what," Scarlet said. Her crossed arms matched his own. "Are you trying to make fun of me?" "It was rhetorical. I've heard the speech, sweetheart. 'A glorious return to the Republic of old.' To a guy like me, a new boss is still a boss." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 3c8b736 | Take a bar of metal and put a single notch in it. The two lengths thus defined have a relationship that can be expressed as the ratio between them. In theory, therefore, any rational number can be expressed with a single mark on a bar of metal. Using a simple alphabetic code, a mark that calculated to a ratio of .1215225 could be read as 12-15-22-5, or "l-o-v-e." The complete plays of Shakespeare could be written in a single mark, if it wer.. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 9eef529 | There are people I love. There are people who have loved me. I fought for what I believed, protected those I could, and stood my ground against the encroaching darkness. Good enough. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| cbed4c2 | Human violence as a kind of fractal--self-similar on all scales from bar fight to system-wide war. The buildup of insults and lost face that swelled over the course of an evening or a century. The shoving and shoving back, neither side sure they wanted to escalate and uncertain how to back down. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 5467460 | One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I'll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house. Some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in front of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumbling. | Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street | ||
| 1fc7021 | Sure, black holes can kill us, and in a variety of interesting and gruesome ways. But, all in all, we may owe our very existence to them. | death existence | Philip C. Plait | |
| e134e1f | An ancient writer says of Homer that he touched nothing without somehow honoring and glorifying it. | rhetoric writing | Edith Hamilton | |
| 75b1ab4 | Liberty depends on self-restraint. Freedom is freedom only when controlled and limited. | self-discipline | Edith Hamilton | |
| 869a57f | It is by our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than the sparrows. | Edith Hamilton | ||
| 98486a3 | We hold there is no worse enemy to a state than he who keeps the law in his own hands. | Edith Hamilton | ||
| 318e7a2 | The death of Baldr is one of the most important moments in the mythology. | John Lindow |