James S. A. Corey Quotes

A decent idea now is way better than a brilliant plan when it’s too late.

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.

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.

She had been a pawn in Holden’s chess game. And Holden had gotten her to the last rank and promoted her to a queen.

Hell no," Jim said when they were alone in the suite. "Absolutely no. No fucking way, no. There have got to be a billion different ways to say no, and I'd still have to cycle through them a couple times to really express the depth of no on this one. Clarissa Mao? On the Roci? How is that anything but a massive load of let's-not-do-that?

Still. Maybe some good can come out of it.
I admire your psychotic optimism.

That’s what peace is, right? Postponing the conflict until the thing you were fighting over doesn’t matter.

“I’m not a traitor,” Bobbie said to her reflection in the mirror. Mirror Bobbie looked unconvinced.

They were willing to risk a hole in the ship emptying out half the ship’s air rather than let her up to the bridge. It was sort of gratifying to be scarier than sudden decompression.

Realizing you’ve got shit on your fingers is the first step toward washing your hands.

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.

Naomi shook her head once, tightly, and held on to her anger like it was a vaccine against something worse.

When what came next didn’t matter, anybody could do anything. Nothing had consequences.

“See, this is why I can’t ever be in command,” she said.
“Don’t like making tough calls with incomplete information?”
“More I’m not suicidally irresponsible,” she replied.

This was the problem with thousand-year Reichs. They came and they went like fireflies.