Top 500 James S.A. Corey Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “There was a relentless forward motion to the man. The universe might knock him down over and over again, but unless he was dead, he’d just keep getting up and shuffling ahead toward his goal. Holden thought he had probably been a very good scientist. Thrilled by small victories, undeterred by setbacks. Plodding along until he got to where he needed to be.”

— James S.A. Corey

52. “Sure, boss,” Havelock said. “Cool as November, smooth as China silk.”

— James S.A. Corey

53. “Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, did that ship just fire a spread of torpedoes at us?”

— James S.A. Corey

54. “The universe is always stranger than you think.”

— James S.A. Corey

55. “More than once he’d wandered into a brothel and left only when they threw him out with an emptied account, a sore groin, and a prostate as dry as the Sahara desert.”

— James S.A. Corey

56. “You’re a tough guy, but I’m a nightmare wrapped in the apocalypse.”

— James S.A. Corey

57. “You’ll have something to ride on that doesn’t make your cock look as small as that gaudy turd.”

— James S.A. Corey

58. “In his opinion, faith was generally for people who were bad at math.”

— James S.A. Corey

59. “Everyone too busy trying to survive to spend any time creating something new.”

— James S.A. Corey

60. “Trashy people puke,” Tilly said. “Ladies are unwell.”

— James S.A. Corey

61. “It’s the basic problem with religion, be it Jesus or Vishnu or God Emperors. Ideological purity never survives contact with the enemy.”

— James S.A. Corey

62. “History, Michio believed, was a long series of surprises that seemed inevitable in retrospect.”

— James S.A. Corey

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

— James S.A. Corey

64. “One of my teachers back in school always used to say that contagion was the one absolute proof of community. People could pretend there weren’t drug users and prostitutes and unvaccinated children all they wanted, but when the plague came through, all that mattered was who was actually breathing your air.”

— James S.A. Corey

65. “The Epstein Drive hadn’t given humanity the stars, but it had delivered the planets.”

— James S.A. Corey

66. “There are two sides in this, but they aren’t inner planets and outer ones. Belters and everyone else. It’s not like that. It’s the people who want more violence and the ones who want less. And no matter what other variable you sample out of, you’ll find some of both.”

— James S.A. Corey

67. “There’s a thing that happens,” Avasarala said, “when unthinkable things become thinkable. We’re in a moment of chaos. Everything’s up for grabs. Legitimacy itself is up for grabs. That’s where we are now.”

— James S.A. Corey

68. “Avasarala laughed at that. “True. But if he’s sending his hired killer to Earth, we – ” “Wait, what?” “If Holden was – ” “Forget Holden. You called me his hired killer. Is that how you guys think of me? The killer on Holden’s payroll?” Avasarala frowned. “You’re not?” “Well, mostly I’m a mechanic. But the idea that the UN has a file on me somewhere that lists me as the Rocinante’s killer? That’s kind of awesome.”

— James S.A. Corey

69. “Do we have a plan?” “A couple,” Jim said. “Either of them good?” “Oh, no. Not at all. Just different flavors of terrible.”

— James S.A. Corey

70. “Boarding a ship was one of the riskiest maneuvers in naval combat. It was basically a race between the boarders rushing to the engine room and the collective will of those who had their fingers on the self-destruct button.”

— James S.A. Corey

71. “He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time.”

— James S.A. Corey

72. “I didn’t switch sides. I stopped playing.”

— James S.A. Corey

73. “We’re not people,” he said. “We’re the stories that people tell each other about us. Belters are crazy terrorists. Earthers are lazy gluttons. Martians are cogs in a great big machine.” “Men are fighters,” Naomi said, and then, her voice growing bleak. “Women are nurturing and sweet and they stay home with the kids. It’s always been like that. We always react to the stories about people, not who they really are.” “And look where it got us,” Holden said.”

— James S.A. Corey

74. “Ferns can be very aggressive,” Prax said.”

— James S.A. Corey

75. “You think he may be a triple agent?” “It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened. The one thing you know about someone who’s willing to compromise his allies is that he’s willing to compromise his allies.”

— James S.A. Corey

76. “Violence is what people do when they run out of good ideas.”

— James S.A. Corey

77. “All of human civilization had been built out of the ruins of what had come before. Life itself was a grand chemical improvisation that began with the simplest replicators and grew and collapsed and grew again. Catastrophe was just one part of what always happened. It was a prelude to what came next. “You.”

— James S.A. Corey

78. “But pacifism only works when your enemy has a conscience.”

— James S.A. Corey

79. “The keel-mounted rail gun pushed the whole ship backward in a solid mathematical relationship to the mass of the two-kilo tungsten round moving at a measurable fraction of c. Newton’s third law expressed as violence. Holden’s.”

— James S.A. Corey

80. “The massive radiation exposure had failed to give him superpowers.”

— James S.A. Corey

81. “It killed humans, therefore it was a weapon. But radiation killed humans, and a medical X-ray machine wasn’t intended as a weapon. Holden was starting to feel like they were all monkeys playing with a microwave. Push a button, a light comes on inside, so it’s a light. Push a different button and stick your hand inside, it burns you, so it’s a weapon. Learn to open and close the door, it’s a place to hide things. Never grasping what it actually did, and maybe not even having the framework necessary to figure it out. No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.”

— James S.A. Corey

82. “There was an old joke. Miller didn’t remember where he’d heard it. Girl’s at her own father’s funeral, meets this really cute guy. They talk, hit it off, but he leaves before she can get his number. Girl doesn’t know how to track the guy down. So a week later, she kills her mom. Big laugh.”

— James S.A. Corey

83. “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

84. “He’s using you as his external, aftermarket conscience.”

— James S.A. Corey

85. “They weren’t really stopping, of course. Nothing in space ever actually stopped; it only came into a matching orbit with some other object. They were now following CA-2216862 on its merry millennium-long trip around the sun.”

— James S.A. Corey

86. “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

87. “It was contrast that gave things shape. Brightness made darkness. Fullness made emptiness. Loneliness defined the borders of whatever not-loneliness was called. They were comparative.”

— James S.A. Corey

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

— James S.A. Corey

89. “Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she’ll be haunted by what might be behind it.”

— James S.A. Corey

90. “Live like you’re dead.”

— James S.A. Corey

91. “If you don’t have the data you need, play with the data you have, see if something comes out of it.”

— James S.A. Corey

92. “The deep human instinct to come together in crisis. To take care of each other. In its best light, it was what made humanity human. But he also had the dark suspicion that it was a kind of bargaining. Look, universe, see how kind and gentle and nice I am? Don’t let the hammer fall on me. Even if it was only grief and fear, he’d take it. Anything that helped them all treat each other well.”

— James S.A. Corey

93. “The concrete replaces the forest. You get in its way, you get paved over. If you can find a way to live in the cracks, you can thrive anywhere. There were always cracks.”

— James S.A. Corey

94. “We’re all going to lose each other eventually, and that’s been true since before we were a crew. That’s what being born means. Everything else is just specifics.”

— James S.A. Corey

95. “In order to be heard by the oppressing class, one must speak as a member of it. Not only the language, but the diction. The accusation of tyranny, however well-founded in fact, is dismissed unless it is delivered in the manner that power recognizes as powerful.”

— James S.A. Corey

96. “He hadn’t been aware he’d felt wrong until he suddenly felt right again.”

— James S.A. Corey

97. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’ll give me all the kingdoms of the Earth if I just bow down and do one act of worship for you?” Dresden cocked his head. “I don’t know the reference.”

— James S.A. Corey

98. “Do people talk about the war?” Miller asked. “Often,” the missionary said. “Anyone make sense of it?” “No. I don’t believe war ever does. It’s a madness that’s in our nature. Sometimes it recurs; sometimes it subsides.” “Sounds like a disease.” “The herpes simplex of the species?” the missionary said with a laugh. “I suppose there are worse ways to think of it. I’m afraid that as long as we’re human, it will be with us.”

— James S.A. Corey

99. “The moral high ground is a lovely place. It won’t stop a missile, though. It won’t alter the trajectory of a gauss round.”

— James S.A. Corey

100. “Knowing that all you can give isn’t enough is its own burden.”

— James S.A. Corey