Top 500 James S.A. Corey Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 10 of 10

451. “I think about all the things we could have done, all the miracles we could have achieved, if we were all just a little bit better than it turns out we are.”

— James S.A. Corey

452. “But if all the things in her books were about other places with other rules, then none of them could ever really be about her. It was like going to school one morning and finding out that math worked differently for you, so even if you got the same answers as everyone else, yours was wrong.”

— James S.A. Corey

453. “One thing about space: it might be a big radiation-filled vacuum that’d kill you in a heartbeat if you weren’t paying attention, but at least it never had turbulence.”

— James S.A. Corey

454. “It was a lesson he’d never forgotten. That humans only have so much emotional energy. No matter how intense the situation, or how powerful the feelings, it was impossible to maintain a heightened emotional state forever. Eventually you’d just get tired and want it to end.”

— James S.A. Corey

455. “All of the circumstances that made him your enemy will be gone. What’s the value in clinging to the hate?”

— James S.A. Corey

456. “Dammit,” Holden said after he’d killed the connection. “You ever get the sense that the universe is out to get you?” “Sometimes I get the sense that the universe is out to get you,” Amos said with a grin. “It’s fun to watch.”

— James S.A. Corey

457. “We’re spending our whole lives together, so we need to be really gentle.”

— James S.A. Corey

458. “We also both know that when it comes to getting people to deny their own immediate needs in favor of a greater good, asking nicely almost never works.”

— James S.A. Corey

459. “The dysfunctions and idiosyncrasies of childhood became the self-evident norms of adulthood.”

— James S.A. Corey

460. “Ferns can be very aggressive.”

— James S.A. Corey

461. “We all define ourselves by the people around us, because that’s the kind of monkey we are.”

— James S.A. Corey

462. “Santichai and Melissa Supitayaporn were a pair of eighty-year-old earthborn missionaries from the Church of Humanity Ascendant, a religion that eschewed supernaturalism in all forms, and whose theology boiled down to Humans can be better than they are, so let’s do that.”

— James S.A. Corey

463. “Humans, Havelock knew from long experience, were first and foremost social animals, and he himself was profoundly human. It was more romantic – hell, more masculine – to pretend he was an island, unaffected by the waves of emotion around him. But it wasn’t true, and he’d made his peace with that fact.”

— James S.A. Corey

464. “All the places you visit start changing into new ones the second you leave.”

— James S.A. Corey

465. “I have a ship with guns on it now, and the next time someone orders me to do something, I’m using them.”

— James S.A. Corey

466. “Never in human history have we discovered something useful and then chosen not to use it.”

— James S.A. Corey

467. “I think we got lucky. I think we were one little system in a vast, unreachable universe that was always on the edge of destroying itself, and now we have thirteen hundred chances to figure out how to live with each other. How to be gentle with each other. How to get it right. It’s better odds than we had.”

— James S.A. Corey

468. “Honor the past without living in it.”

— James S.A. Corey

469. “I am an officer of the Laconian Empire, Governor Singh. I believe what I’m told to believe.”

— James S.A. Corey

470. “It’s probably full of vomit zombies,” Holden finally said. “Want to go see?” said Miller. “Oh yeah,” Holden said.”

— James S.A. Corey

471. “Desperate psychotic people do desperate psychotic things when they’re exposed. I refuse to grant them immunity from exposure out of fear of their reaction. When you do, the desperate psychos wind up in charge.”

— James S.A. Corey

472. “Or was that fatalism another good move in design space? Did the universe evolve eyes and wings and sense organs and bitter amusement at the prospect of death all the same way?”

— James S.A. Corey

473. “Epithets like that are an attempt to dehumanize a group so that you won’t feel as bad about killing them.”

— James S.A. Corey

474. “It’s not healthy having God sleeping right there where we can all watch him dream.”

— James S.A. Corey

475. “A world no longer of haves and have-nots, but of the engaged and the apathetic.”

— James S.A. Corey

476. “You’re the talker. I’ve seen you face down Fred Johnson, UN naval captains, OPA cowboys, and drugged-up space pirates. You talk out your ass better than most people do using their mouth and sober.”

— James S.A. Corey

477. “They’re people,” Naomi said, exhaustion in her tone. “We’re trying to do all of this with humans. Shortsightedness is coded in our DNA.”

— James S.A. Corey

478. “Miller smiled. All his smiles looked like he was hearing a good joke at a funeral.”

— James S.A. Corey

479. “The universe was always stranger than you expected. Sometimes it was full of wonders. Sometimes full of horrors.”

— James S.A. Corey

480. “People always whispered when they were hiding. Wrapped in a space suit and surrounded by vacuum, Gomez could have been lighting fireworks inside his armor and no one would have heard it, but he whispered.”

— James S.A. Corey

481. “Breaking things was always easier than building them up.”

— James S.A. Corey

482. “For a moment, his pupils flickered blue, like there were tiny bathypelagic fish swimming in the deep trenches of his eyeballs.”

— James S.A. Corey

483. “There was so much that they’d never seen or understood. They’d all just bumbled through, using the gates as shortcuts and hoping for the best. A species of beautiful idiots.”

— James S.A. Corey

484. “I never changed sides,” Fred said. “The sides keep changing around me. I was always the one who wanted order. Peace. Justice, even.”

— James S.A. Corey

485. “Most of what we know isn’t why things are what they are. We just figure out enough about how they work that we can predict the next thing that’s going to happen.”

— James S.A. Corey

486. “You go into a situation thinking about it a particular way, and then something changes. Then either you stick with the ideas you had before or you look at everything you have to work with and find a new shape.”

— James S.A. Corey

487. “All the while, the botanist spoke only of Mei, of his need to find her. Holden realized that he’d never in his life needed anything as badly as this man needed to see his daughter again. To his surprise, it made him sad. Prax had been robbed of everything, had all his fat boiled away; he’d been rendered down to the bare minimum of humanity. All he had left was his need to find his little girl, and Holden envied him for it.”

— James S.A. Corey

488. “I’m heading down to the galley for a minute,” he said. “Grab a coffee for me too,” Alex said. “Oh no. Not coffee. I’m maybe up to some chamomile or warm milk. Something soothing and unaggressive.” “Sounds good,” Alex said. “When you change your mind and get some coffee, grab one for me too.”

— James S.A. Corey

489. “People are scared and they’re hurting, yeah? And some big man comes along, and he seems confident. He looks sure of himself. All the things that are eating at your heart, they aren’t eating at his. And yeah, he gets a team. Everyone falls in line behind him, and bad things happen. The worst things.”

— James S.A. Corey

490. “Annie,” Tilly said. “If I wanted to suck vile fluids out of a flaccid and indifferent tube, I’d have stayed on Earth with my husband.”

— James S.A. Corey

491. “Holden turned off his newsfeed, fidgeted in his bunk, and tried to wake Miller up by staring at him. It didn’t work. The massive radiation exposure had failed to give him superpowers.”

— James S.A. Corey

492. “That’s the kind of stealing only governments can get away with,” Amos said.”

— James S.A. Corey

493. “I’m not sure what liberty is if you’re not permitted to decide what chances you’re willing to take.”

— James S.A. Corey

494. “We’re scientists. We only know things until someone shows us we’re wrong.”

— James S.A. Corey

495. “But, like so many things in life, when you come to the spot where you’re supposed to do the rituals, you do them.”

— James S.A. Corey

496. “Let’s solve the extinction level threat first. Then we can all go back to killing each other at a civilized pace.”

— James S.A. Corey

497. “There is nothing so destructive and also so easy to overlook as a bad idea.”

— James S.A. Corey

498. “Dead’s not good, but at least it’s simple.”

— James S.A. Corey

499. “Pain reminds you that you aren’t dead yet.”

— James S.A. Corey

500. “Very few people stood wholly for the law or wholly against it, and so for them the catastrophe of the churn was an annoyance to be avoided or endured or else a titillation on the newsfeeds. That it was a question of life and death for other people spoke in its favor as entertainment.”

— James S.A. Corey