James S. A. Corey Quotes

It took his breath away. The elegance and functionality of the structure lay out before him, as beautiful and simple and effective as a leaf or a root cluster. To have something so much like the fruits of evolution, but designed by human minds, was awe-inspiring. It was the pinnacle of what creativity meant, the impossible made real.

I'm not asking you to sleep with him.
Good, because I don't use sex as a weapon," Bobbie said. "I use weapons as weapons.

She’d stopped looking tired a while ago and had moved on to whatever tired turns into when it became a lifestyle.

That's not the game," Avasarala said. "No one gets shot. They get marginalized. It's worse.
No, it's not. I've seen people shot. I've seen my friends shot. When you say, 'That's not the game,' you mean for people like you. Not like me.
Avasarala's expression cooled.
Yes, that's what I mean," the old woman said. "The level we're playing at has different rules. It's like playing go. It's all about exerting influence. Controlling the board without occupying it.
Poker is a game, too," Bobbie said. "But sometimes the stakes get so high that one player decides it's easier to kill the other guy and walk away with the money. It happens all the time.

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.

When Bobbie tried to imagine being so wealthy you could own a spaceship just to compete in races, she failed. That the same girl had run away to be an OPA rebel probably said a lot about the relationship of wealth and contentment, but Bobbie had a hard time being that philosophical.

Familiarity might breed contempt, but Bobbie hadn’t much liked Soren right from the start.

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

The intensity of your feelings isn’t evidence.

Do not underestimate his capacity to fuck things up.

I’ve been through a lot of hearings about one damn thing and another. Most of the time they’re exercises in ass covering. If the unvarnished truth ever came out at one, it would be because someone screwed up.

The rich scent of well-balanced soil was like incense.

The mirror plummeting toward the surface of Ganymede—toward his greenhouse, his soybeans, his life’s work—hadn’t chosen anything. It was a victim of cause and effect, the same as everything else.

That man could take a visitation from God with thirty underdressed angels announcing that sex was okay after all and make it seem vaguely depressing.

He cut the connection before she could answer. Long goodbyes weren’t anyone’s strong suit.