James S. A. Corey
293 quotes
Biography
"Writing science fiction is a race between the author's imagination and the progress of science and history. Fiction is always on the losing end; the question is only how fast."
"The Nephesh community isn't the first religious or pseudo-religious group to decide that they get to choose whether the rules apply to them. Whether crimes are really crimes if one of their faithful is involved. The Catholic Church practically made raping altar boys into a brand. The Mormon/Boy Scout pedophile cover-up isn't covered up anymore. I'll stop there only because I don't have time to name every religion in existence and the shit they swept under their rugs in the name of Protecting the Faith. It seems like every time someone sets themselves up as a moral authority, it's to help bury the fact that they are doing something immoral."
"Say what you will about organized crime, at least it’s organized."
"If Miller had ever been called upon to describe her, the phrase deceptive coloration would have figured in."
"“Too many dots,” Miller said. “Not enough lines.”"
"The enlisted guys will be okay, but the officers get the sense of humor trained out of ’em."
"It was a real book—onionskin pages bound in what might have been actual leather. Miller had seen pictures of them before; the idea of that much weight for a single megabyte of data struck him as decadent."
"He couldn’t fix the cancer of war, couldn’t even slow down the spread, but at least he could admit it was happening."
"She didn’t care. Not caring was how she got through the day."
"The beautiful thing about losing your illusions, he thought, was that you got to stop pretending."
"Never knew if you had any luck left unless you pushed it."
"It’s the problem with politics. Your enemies are often your allies. And vice versa."
"All bluster, no balls."
"This was the kind of man who’d killed Julie, Miller thought. Stupid. Shortsighted. A man born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been."
"When, Miller wondered, does someone stop being human? There had to be a moment, some decision that you made and before it, you were one person, and after it, someone else...If he’d seen it in someone else—Muss, Havelock, Sematimba—he wouldn’t have taken more than a minute to realize they’d gone off the rails. Since it was him, he had taken longer to notice. But Holden was right. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost himself."
"There was life out there. They had proof of it now. And the proof came in the shape of a weapon, so what did that tell him?"
"Holden decided that he was okay with not feeling any remorse for them. The moral complexity of the situation had grown past his ability to process it, so he just relaxed in the warm glow of victory instead."
"Liquor doesn’t make you feel better. Just makes you not so worried about feeling bad."
"Miller was staring at him like an entomologist trying to figure out exactly where the pin went."
"He considered recording it. His suit would be able to make a simple visual file and stream the data out in real time. But no. This was his moment. His and Julia’s. The rest of humanity could guess what it had been like if they cared."
"It was as easy as keying in a door code. Somehow he felt that arming fusion bombs to detonate around him should have been more difficult."
"He cut the connection before she could answer. Long goodbyes weren’t anyone’s strong suit."
"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."
"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."
"The rich scent of well-balanced soil was like incense."