Top 500 James S.A. Corey Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Wars never ended because one side was defeated. They ended because the enemies were reconciled. Anything else was just a postponement of the next round of violence.”

— James S.A. Corey

352. “All this has happened because someone saw an opportunity that no one else did. They had the audacity to strike where no one else would even have considered an attack. That’s the power of audacity, and if a general is lucky and strong-minded, they can take that advantage and keep the enemy on their back foot forever.”

— James S.A. Corey

353. “You killed Dresden,” Fred said. “That’s a problem.” “It needed to happen.” “I’m not sure it did,” Fred replied, but his voice was careful. Testing. Miller smiled, a little sadly. “That’s why it needed to happen,” he said. The small, coughing laugh told Miller that Fred understood him.”

— James S.A. Corey

354. “I could kill you with my hands, Marcus thought, and it was enough to evoke the smile that etiquette called for.”

— James S.A. Corey

355. “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

356. “Fred’s vacuum-rated armor protected him from the smell of viscera, but it reported it to him as a slight increase in atmospheric methane levels. The stench of death reduced to a data point.”

— James S.A. Corey

357. “Only here on Earth, where food grew on its own, where air was just a by-product of random untended plants, where resources lay thick on the ground, could a person actually choose not to do anything at all. There was enough extra created by those who felt the need to work that the surplus could feed the rest. A world no longer of the haves and the have-nots, but of the engaged and the apathetic.”

— James S.A. Corey

358. “If someone is ready to accept Christ, it doesn’t take much effort on my part to help them. If they aren’t, no amount of hectoring them does any good. So why try?”

— James S.A. Corey

359. “There was justice to be had. He just couldn’t afford it.”

— James S.A. Corey

360. “He was in ruins, but it was okay, because he was dying.”

— James S.A. Corey

361. “You all right?” He smiled. “Why do you ask?” “Because you’re not all right,” she said.”

— James S.A. Corey

362. “This isn’t about good guys and bad guys,” Anna said. “Yes, we’ve picked sides now, because some of the actions they are about to take will have serious consequences for us, and we’re going to try to stop them. But what you’re doing is demonizing them, making them the enemy. The problem with that is that once we’ve stopped them and they can’t hurt us anymore, they’re still demons. Still the enemy.”

— James S.A. Corey

363. “He’d been driven by his fear to become someone else. Someone who handled fear by turning it into violence.”

— James S.A. Corey

364. “It seemed to her that the real sign you were getting old was when you stopped needing to prove you weren’t getting old.”

— James S.A. Corey

365. “Those kids? They’re illegal, but they don’t just vanish, not.”

— James S.A. Corey

366. “She tapped the red dot on the map that was the Tempest. “Anything you can do, I can do better.”

— James S.A. Corey

367. “People like us? We aren’t righteous. But we can pretend to be, if we want, and that’s almost the same as if it were true.”

— James S.A. Corey

368. “Time was supposed to heal all wounds. To Drummer, that was just a nice way of saying that if she waited long enough, none of the things that seemed important to her would turn out to matter.”

— James S.A. Corey

369. “Humanity had come as far as it had in a haze of war, sickness, violence, and genocide. History was drenched in blood. But it also had cooperation and kindness, generosity, intermarriage. The one didn’t come without the other, and Holden had to take comfort in that. The sense that however terrible humanity’s failings were, there was still a little more in them worth admiring.”

— James S.A. Corey

370. “We keep acting without thinking and you think the solution is to do it one more time. You have allied yourself with stupid, violent men, and you are trying to convince yourself that being stupid and violent will work. That makes you stupid too.”

— James S.A. Corey

371. “In Amos’ experience the more dangerous any two people were, the more carefully polite their social interactions tended to be.”

— James S.A. Corey

372. “Everything changed, and it went right on changing. A terrible thought when things were good, a comforting one now. Whatever happened, she could be certain that things wouldn’t stay the way they were now. And if she stayed smart and clever and lucky, she’d be able to affect how the next change came. Or take advantage of it.”

— James S.A. Corey

373. “Ideological purity never survives contact with the enemy.”

— James S.A. Corey

374. “Will you be back?” Lydia said. She hadn’t meant to, because she knew in her heart, in her bones, and deeper than that what the answer was. Timmy smiled at her for the last time. I take it back, she thought. Kill him. Kill the boy. Kill everyone else in the world. Shoot babies in the head and dance on their bodies. Any atrocity, any evil, is justified if it keeps you from leaving me.”

— James S.A. Corey

375. “It was easy to make fun of the marines when they weren’t listening. In Holden’s navy days, making fun of jarheads was as natural as cussing. But four marines had died getting him off the Donnager, and three of them had made a conscious decision to do so. Holden promised himself that he’d never make fun of them again.”

— James S.A. Corey

376. “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.”

— James S.A. Corey

377. “Lopez reached into his pocket, took out a small packet of white lozenges, and popped one into his mouth. He didn’t offer one to Holden. Lopez’s pupils contracted to tiny points as he sucked the lozenge. Focus drugs. He’d be watching every tic of Holden’s face during questioning. Tough to lie to.”

— James S.A. Corey

378. “The bartender – Chip – said, “Had a few too many of my margaritas?” “The first one was too many,” Holden replied, then climbed under the booth looking for the terminal. “And calling that a margarita should be illegal.”

— James S.A. Corey

379. “Science had given mankind many gifts, and she valued it. But the one important thing it had taken away was the value of subjective, personal experience. That had been replaced with the idea that only measurable and testable concepts had value. But humans didn’t work that way...”

— James S.A. Corey

380. “Part of his mind was screaming, but it was a distant one and easy to ignore.”

— James S.A. Corey

381. “I actually read history. It’s like reading prophecy, you know.”

— James S.A. Corey

382. “As soon as we get the place secure, I’ll get in touch,” Miller said. “Okay, but don’t take too long. If Thoth Station has a whorehouse left standing, I’m going to need help prying Amos out of it.”

— James S.A. Corey

383. “Things change,” Alex said. “And they don’t change back,” she.”

— James S.A. Corey

384. “After dinner, Holden took a long, slow tour of his new ship. He opened every door, looked in every closet, turned on every panel, and read every readout. He stood in engineering next to the fusion reactor and closed his eyes, getting used to the almost subliminal vibration she made. If something ever went wrong with it, he wanted to feel it in his bones before any warning ever sounded.”

— James S.A. Corey

385. “You ever wondered why I leave as soon as anyone else shows up?” “I’m special?” “Yeah, I wouldn’t go that far.”

— James S.A. Corey

386. “History was drenched in blood.”

— James S.A. Corey

387. “The man he’d once been wasn’t a collection of personality traits. He was the things he knew, the desires of his heart, the skills he had.”

— James S.A. Corey

388. “Well, you’ve got a full load of torpedoes and bullets, three Martian warships trailing you, one angry old lady in tea withdrawal, and a Martian Marine who could probably kill you with your own teeth. What do you do?”

— James S.A. Corey

389. “The velocities and forces involved in anything at orbital altitudes were enough to kill a human with just the rounding error. At their speeds, the friction from air too thin to breathe would set them on fire.”

— James S.A. Corey

390. “That was the danger of being old and a politician. Habits outlived the situations that created them. Policies remained in place after the situations that inspired them had changed.”

— James S.A. Corey

391. “The seas had been around longer than humans, had helped create them, and then when they were all dead, it’d take their water back without a thought.”

— James S.A. Corey

392. “We’re fine now,” Sanjrani said. “We’ll be fine for three years. Maybe three and a half. Then the recycling systems stop being able to meet demand. We won’t have infrastructure in place to fill the gaps. And then we’ll starve. Not just Earth. Not just Mars. The Belt too. And once we start, we’ll have no way to stop.” “All right,” Michio said. “How do we fix it?” “I don’t know,” Sanjrani said.”

— James S.A. Corey

393. “Jim, they make these things not to be fiddled with. The civilian version of this device fuses itself into a solid lump of silicon if it thinks it’s being tampered with. Who knows what the military version of the fail-safe is? Drop the magnetic bottle in the reactor? Turn us into a supernova?”

— James S.A. Corey

394. “A few generations living and dying without a sky, and enclosed spaces lost the atavistic terror of premature burial.”

— James S.A. Corey

395. “He looked at the cop. He’d known the man less than a day, didn’t trust him, and wasn’t sure he much liked him. And this was who he’d die with.”

— James S.A. Corey

396. “The ocean, just outside, seeped into everything. An olfactory reminder to everyone passing through the Ellis Island of the space age that Earth was absolutely unique to the human race. The birthplace of everything. The salt water flowing in everyone’s veins first pulled from the same oceans right outside the building. The seas had been around longer than humans, had helped create them, and then when they were all dead, it’d take their water back without a thought.”

— James S.A. Corey

397. “I love the period of rotation. Thirty hours. You can get in a full day’s work, stay up getting drunk at the saloon, and still get a full night’s sleep. I don’t know why we didn’t think of this back home.”

— James S.A. Corey

398. “Shouldn’t let go of being educated,” he said. “Universe spent a lot of time telling you something. Now you’re second-guessing it. Maybe all those other things were getting you ready for this.” Something.”

— James S.A. Corey

399. “The huge moments in life seemed like they should have more ceremony and effects. The important words – the life-changing ones – should echo a little. But they didn’t. They sounded just like everything else.”

— James S.A. Corey

400. “What I want is Ceres Station or Earth or Mars. You know what they have in New York? All-night diners with greasy food and crap coffee. I want to live on a world with all-night diners. And racetracks. And instant-delivery Thai food made from something I haven’t already eaten seven times in the last month.”

— James S.A. Corey