Top 15 James S. A. Corey Quotes

But in the thousands of systems where life had solved the complex problem of defying entropy, there were only so many shapes. Sometimes weird shit was going to look familiar. An enemy alien was going to look like a tree or a vulva or a bird because there were too many things and not enough room in design space for all of them. ...
Maybe the wars were about that as much as anything. Who got to keep what shapes. Who got to define what they meant.

Humans are structureless. They live in conflict with themselves and each other. Their great genius is rationalization: lying into mirrors until they bully and seduce themselves into things they would never otherwise do. They are creatures of self-delusion, regret, and desire.

We never had a chance," he said. "Look at all this. We never stood a chance against this.
We did not," Else agreed. "Too bad we didn't know.
Knowing wouldn't have mattered." ... "We'd have fought anyway," he said, thinking of Ostencour and his improvised knife. Synnia wrestling down the guard. "It's what we do.
I don't know if that idea is stupid or noble," Else said.
Human," Dafyd said. "It's just human. We don't stop just because there's no hope.

I think some important scientific questions have finally been answered. Alien life exists, and they are assholes.

What scares me, Mose. It isn't fucking it up and dying. What if we fuck up, but we don't die. What if we fuck it all up and live? We're at the end of something, sure. Maybe we're at the beginning of something too. Maybe we make a whole new world. A whole new planet like Earth used to be. Hundreds of generations. Billions of people, that all start here. And we fuck it up for them.
I don't understand.
What if we just go on like people always have? The same bullshit. Give the same bullies and liars power like we did before. Cut all the same corners. Put up with all the same hypocrites. Make everything here into more of the shit that got us here. That seems worse. For me? That's worse.

For this to work, a million things have to go right. For it to fall apart, just one of them has to go wrong.

I know men life Sandro. People are scared and they're hurting, yeah? And some big man comes along, and he seems confident. He looks sure of himself. All the things that are eating at your heart, they aren't eating at his. And yeah, he gets a team. Everyone falls in line behind him, and bad things happen. The worst things.
Mose cleared his throat, but Filip kept going before he could speak. "We're at the start of something here. We can't let it slide. If it's okay now, it's okay forever. You plug a leak when it's small, or you suffer when it's big.

Look," Nami said. "I don't need to hear all the ways your father made life harder for you, and I'm not going to explain how living with Saint Anna broke a few things for me. We have no reason to compete, you and I. The only point is that our parents can lay burdens on us, all without meaning to, that we'll have to carry around for the rest of our lives and there's nothing we can do about that. But you and I still get to decide how we carry those burdens.

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.

He remembered his mother saying The only right you have with anyone in this life is the right to walk away. He thought about his father’s need to frame everything as an epic struggle between himself and the universe.

It’s the basic problem with religion, be it Jesus or Vishnu or God Emperors. Ideological purity never survives contact with the enemy.

You’re young yet. I’m not. There’s this thing when you get older where you have to make a choice. Everyone does. You have to decide whether you care more about being your best self or your real one. If you’re more loyal to who you ought to be or who you really are.

He found himself crafting the role of Governor Rittenaur as if he were acting a part in a play. He had come to notice when his own impulses were different from what Governor Rittenaur’s would be, and then bury his own judgment to give space to the requirement of his office. He was a professional impersonator of himself.

Klinger knew nothing about him but what she’d been told by Laconia. She would have been just as solicitous to anyone who had come in his position. And if someone else had been in her role, he would have treated them the same way he did her. They weren’t people to each other. They were roles. This was etiquette, and the inauthenticity of the situation oppressed him.

And because it was the most habitable of the new planets by orders of magnitude, it was developed. Because it was developed, it was influential. Because it was influential, it was wealthy. And because it was wealthy, it was corrupt.