Top 500 James S.A. Corey Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “No rest for the wicked, no peace for the good.”

— James S.A. Corey

2. “You take care of your tools, your tools take care of you.”

— James S.A. Corey

3. “Stars are better off without us.”

— James S.A. Corey

4. “It’s just a drop in the bucket, but that’s how buckets are filled.”

— James S.A. Corey

5. “If life transcends death, then I will seek for you there. If not, then there too.”

— James S.A. Corey

6. “As long as you always see the next step, you can walk the whole way.” She.”

— James S.A. Corey

7. “What did you do?” Fred asked. “There was a button,” Holden said. “I pushed it.” “Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn’t it?”

— James S.A. Corey

8. “I have killed, but I am not a killer because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren’t afraid.”

— James S.A. Corey

9. “Doors and corners are always dangerous, because you’re moving into something without being sure what’s there. By the time you see the enemy, you’re exposed to them.” “Sir?” Havelock.”

— James S.A. Corey

10. “There are people I love. There are people who have loved me. I fought for what I believed, protected those I could, and stood my ground against the encroaching darkness. Good enough.”

— James S.A. Corey

11. “Say what you will about organized crime, at least it’s organized.”

— James S.A. Corey

12. “Distributed responsibility is the problem. One person gives the order, another carries it out. One can say they didn’t pull the trigger, the other that they were just doing what they were told, and everyone lets themselves off the hook.”

— James S.A. Corey

13. “Violence is what people do when they run out of good ideas. It’s attractive because it’s simple, it’s direct, it’s almost always available as an option. When you can’t think of a good rebuttal for your opponent’s argument, you can always punch them in the face.”

— James S.A. Corey

14. “Growing older was a falling away of everything that didn’t matter. And a deepening appreciation of all the parts that were important enough to stay.”

— James S.A. Corey

15. “In a fight like this, unless you’re willing to lose everything to win, you lose it all by losing.”

— James S.A. Corey

16. “Don’t let things sit for too long. It’s always tempting to just ignore the things that aren’t actually on fire just at the moment, but then you’re also committing to spend your time putting out fires.”

— James S.A. Corey

17. “The only right you have with anyone in life is the right to walk away.”

— James S.A. Corey

18. “My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.” At.”

— James S.A. Corey

19. “Prepare us for what?” Holden asked. “To poke gods with a sharp stick?” “No, Captain Holden. No sticks,” Duarte said. “When you fight gods, you storm heaven.”

— James S.A. Corey

20. “When the crisis comes, we all pull together naturally. It’s easy then. It’s when things drag on too long that we have to make the effort. We need to make sure everyone sees we’re all in this together.”

— James S.A. Corey

21. “You’re the predator right up until you’re prey.”

— James S.A. Corey

22. “I believe there is a dignity in consequences, Captain. I think there’s a kind of truth in them, and I try to cultivate a profound respect for truth.”

— James S.A. Corey

23. “Nothing degraded morale like the sense that the potential for excellence was being denied.”

— James S.A. Corey

24. “Thing about civilization, it’s what keeps people civil. You get rid of one, you can’t count on the other.”

— James S.A. Corey

25. “Every great nation, they said, was founded on a knife and a lie.”

— James S.A. Corey

26. “Humans can be better than they are, so let’s do that.”

— James S.A. Corey

27. “No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.”

— James S.A. Corey

28. “I hear Montana is nice.” “Population density is good. Still more cows than people.”

— James S.A. Corey

29. “That was the thing about hubris. It only became clear in retrospect.”

— James S.A. Corey

30. “That’s the thing about autocracy. It looks pretty decent while it still looks pretty decent. Survivable, anyway. And it keeps looking like that right up until it doesn’t. That’s how you find out it’s too late.”

— James S.A. Corey

31. “I can’t fight pirates without coffee.”

— James S.A. Corey

32. “Hang on, little tomato”, he said. “We’re almost there.”

— James S.A. Corey

33. “Because we’re human, and humans are mean, independent monkeys that reached their greatness by killing every other species of hominid that looked at us funny.”

— James S.A. Corey

34. “The more you share, the more your bowl will be plentiful.”

— James S.A. Corey

35. “Downtime’s easier to enjoy when I know it’ll end.”

— James S.A. Corey

36. “Insurgencies are historically nearly impossible to eradicate, for a few very simple reasons. The insurgents don’t wear uniforms. They look just like the innocent populace. And, they’re the friends and family of that populace. This means that every insurgent killed tends to increase recruiting for the insurgency.”

— James S.A. Corey

37. “You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.”

— James S.A. Corey

38. “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.”

— James S.A. Corey

39. “When people get too comfortable, they get loose. Sloppy.”

— James S.A. Corey

40. “It was, Elvi thought, like finding a sea turtle who thoroughly understood Godel’s incompleteness theorem, but didn’t have any sea-turtley application for it.”

— James S.A. Corey

41. “Theological anthropology is a lot simpler when humans are the only ones with souls.”

— James S.A. Corey

42. “Holden had once dated a Buddhist who said that death was merely a different state of being, and people only feared the unknown that lay behind that transition. Death without warning was preferable, as it removed all fear. He felt he now had the counterargument.”

— James S.A. Corey

43. “It was a perfunctory gesture, meaningful only in retrospect, as so many last kisses are.”

— James S.A. Corey

44. “You never ask for permission, you just apologize later.”

— James S.A. Corey

45. “We’re outgunned and outplanned, and I don’t see how we win.”

— James S.A. Corey

46. “Thank you, Mister Patel,” Holden said. “In thanks, you may now have all my stuff. I don’t care about any of it anymore.” “Including the coffee maker, sir?” “Almost all my stuff.”

— James S.A. Corey

47. “We’re not making any official statements, especially when James Holden’s in the room. No offense, but your track record for blurting information at inopportune moments is the stuff of legend.”

— James S.A. Corey

48. “Until death all is life.”

— James S.A. Corey

49. “The stars are still there,” she said. “We’ll find our own way back to them.”

— James S.A. Corey

50. “Once is never. Twice is always.”

— James S.A. Corey