539 Quotes by James S.A. Corey

Conspiracy theories come up whenever people feel like the universe is too random.

It was normal to sacrifice animals. Rats, pigeons, pigs. Dogs. Chimpanzees. Biology had always suffered the cognitive push-pull of proving that humans were just another kind of animal while at the same time claiming to be morally different in kind.

It had been the most complex, difficult feat of mass-scale engineering humanity had ever accomplished until the next thing they did.

He felt the decision like a seed crystal giving form to the chaos around it, solid, hard, resolute. Desperation, mourning, and a million farewells, one to the other. The word quarantine came to him, and with the logic of dreams, it carried an unsupportable weight of horror. But within it, like the last voice in Pandora’s box, the promise of reunion. One day, when the solution was found, everything that had been lost would be regained. The gates reopened. The vast mind restored.

Having a new high consul would be difficult under any circumstances, but it would be less difficult if there were a story with it.

Don’t think about the odds,” Bobbie said. “Think about the stakes. Think how much we lose if we take the risk and it goes wrong.

That seemed to be the human pattern – reach out to the unknown and then make it into the sort of thing you left in the first place.

Burton had sent Timmy to collect a debt, Timmy had killed the man instead, and Burton hadn’t cut him loose. Two points defined a line, but three defined the playing field. Burton didn’t always have need of boys like Timmy, but sometimes he did. Right now, he did. Lydia sighed. The churn was coming.

And the moral high ground is a lovely place,” Marwick said, as if he were agreeing. “It won’t stop a missile, though.