James S. A. Corey Quotes

We'll get him," Alex said. "We'll always get him back.
Sure we will. Until the time we don't," she said. "It's like this for everyone. There's always going to be a last time, eventually.

When we get out," she said. "Not if. When. We're going to need a plan. If every ship just bolts off on its own, we'll lose contact. They shouldn't know where we went, but we should. At the very least, we should have a record of who went where. This every-man-for-himself-and-God-against-all shit's romantic, but we have to plan for something past just this.

Still. She had hoped. It never hurt to hope, except when it did.

It was always dangerous when the universe fell down in a pattern where the thing you wanted and the wise path were the same.

I mean it happened at the same time, but that's the thing. Time doesn't actually work like that. 'The same time' is a weird linguistic fantasy. It doesn't exist. Simultaneity doesn't act like this.

The universe was tricky, and its sense of humor came with teeth.

The sad fact of the human species that High Consul Duarte understood so well was that you could never overcome tribalism and jingoism with an argument. Tribalism was an irrational position, and it was impossible to defeat an irrational position with a rational argument.

Bobbie felt the pressure of time slipping away like she was watching a door close, with her on the wrong side of it.

That says more about you than about the reality of things.

She had to remind herself that war was always this way. Had always been. Cities had been falling under siege since the time there were cities. Mortars had fallen on schools. Soldiers had stormed hospitals. Bombs had set churches and parks and children on fire. Homes had been lost before now.

Insects buzzed about, still the best-designed pollinating system there was. Technology did a lot of things well, but evolution had it beat when it came to environmental systems.

Patriotism was weird shit.

It was, to say the least, a very high cost and very low probability of success. Singh assumed there was a faith element to the risk that he was just missing. In his opinion, faith was generally for people who were bad at math.

All we need is one lucky break," she said. "One thing to go our way, and your logistical mastermind who would never overreach loses his capital ship in front of everyone who's watching. And I think everyone is watching.
They are," Avasarala agreed with a sigh. "But …
But what?
Avasarala's smile was thin, hard, and bitter. Her eyes flashed with an intelligence poisoned by despair. "But it isn't hubris until he's failed.

If they kill us all, Drummer thought, this will be why. Not their technology, not their strategy, not the invisible cycle of history. It’ll be our inability to do anything without five committee meetings to talk about it.