Top 200 Martha Wells Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Their expressions gave Moon the impression that was he was being watched with disapproval, but he felt like that a lot, so it was probably just him.”

— Martha Wells

102. “This place was creepy. I reminded myself that the terrible thing that had most likely happened here was me. Somehow that didn’t help.”

— Martha Wells

103. “I don’t know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn’t that, it’s that I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me.”

— Martha Wells

104. “I wouldn’t bother searching the small storage spaces until we got down to the looking-for-all-the-body-parts phase.”

— Martha Wells

105. “I was only 97 percent certain this meeting was a trap.”

— Martha Wells

106. “In the bot-fighting business, small mistakes like that get you torn apart.”

— Martha Wells

107. “You’re all idiots,” Stone said, gave Bramble a shove to the head, and walked out. Bramble slumped and sighed in relief. “Stone still loves us.”

— Martha Wells

108. “In a voice soft and deep as night, she said, “Where is he?” Moon’s breath caught in his chest. Leaving, he thought, turning for the door. He would have made it, but Stone was fast even as a groundling, and caught his wrist.”

— Martha Wells

109. “I liked protecting people and things. I liked figuring out smart ways to protect people and things. I liked being right.”

— Martha Wells

110. “Can I ask you a question?” I never know how to answer this. Should I go with my first impulse, which is always “no” or just give in to the inevitable?”

— Martha Wells

111. “They don’t give murderbots decent education modules on anything except murdering, even those are cheap versions.”

— Martha Wells

112. “Stone waited there in groundling form, his opaque expression somehow conveying a deep disgust with all of them, but especially Moon.”

— Martha Wells

113. “Good luck. I understand why humans say that, but luck sucks.”

— Martha Wells

114. “We made it outside to the pedestrian plaza and I asked her, “Do you need a medic?” I thought she might be sick. If I was a human and I’d had to be in the pavilion with all those other humans for the past two and a half hours, I’d be sick.”

— Martha Wells

115. “Gurathin turned to him, impatient. “The log confirms it because that’s what the Unit believes happened.” Bharadwaj sighed. “Yet here I sit, alive.”

— Martha Wells

116. “They don’t want anything to come between them and their goal. They have their ideas, they don’t want facts to bother them.”

— Martha Wells

117. “But I couldn’t ignore it. I mean, I guess I couldn’t. Ignoring stuff is always an option, up until it kills you.”

— Martha Wells

118. “The last thing I wanted was to ask the company gunship for help. The last thing I wanted was for GrayCris to catch us. The two last things were incompatible.”

— Martha Wells

119. “If you had to take care of humans, it was better to take care of small soft ones who were nice to you and thought you were great because you kept preventing them from being murdered.”

— Martha Wells

120. “I didn’t know what that meant, but it was a good job title and honestly it made me a little jealous.”

— Martha Wells

121. “It’s very dramatic,” Ratthi added. “The crew think you’re a special security agent who betrayed the company to save us.” It was very dramatic, like something out of a historical adventure serial. Also correct in every aspect except for all the facts, like something out of a historical adventure serial.”

— Martha Wells

122. “Miki, damage report.” “I am at eighty-six percent functional capacity.” It held up its arm stump. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

— Martha Wells

123. “Amena is on the survey because her education requires an internship in almost getting killed, I guess.”

— Martha Wells

124. “I felt a wave of non-caring about to come over me, and I knew I couldn’t let it. If I was going to follow my plan, such as it was, I needed to care. If I let myself not care, then there was no telling where I’d end up.”

— Martha Wells

125. “Tlacey bought us passage on a public shuttle,” Rami told me. “That could be a good sign, right?” “Sure,” I said. It was a terrible sign.”

— Martha Wells

126. “It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t about to die. It was still a little hilarious.”

— Martha Wells

127. “Gurathin sighed and rubbed his face and looked off into the distance, like he regretted all his life choices that had led to him standing here right now.”

— Martha Wells

128. “About forty turns ago there was a colony in the east, and a warrior named Swift, who had to change her name to Sorrow...”

— Martha Wells

129. “There was a big huge deal about it, and Security was all “but what if it takes over the station’s systems and kills everybody” and Pin-Lee told them “if it wanted to do that it would have done it by now,” which in hindsight was probably not the best response.”

— Martha Wells

130. “I yelled, “No!” which I’m not supposed to do; I’m always supposed to speak respectfully to the clients, even when they’re about to accidentally commit suicide.”

— Martha Wells

131. “You dislike your function. I don’t understand how that is possible.”

— Martha Wells

132. “I know, I said, if the humans were dead, who would make the media?”

— Martha Wells

133. “The company had never given us armor that nice, though in its defense, our armor did get blasted off us at regular intervals.”

— Martha Wells

134. “We walked up to the first rack and I paid with another hard currency card and -Wow, that was three times the price of my last transient hostel. It’s a good thing I don’t have to eat.”

— Martha Wells

135. “I’m tired of entirely new things,” Tremaine said. “I don’t understand most of the old things yet.”

— Martha Wells

136. “Now she was talking to me like I was a hysterical human. Worse, I was acting like a hysterical human.”

— Martha Wells

137. “I know I said SecUnits aren’t sentimental about each other, but I wished it wasn’t one of the DeltFall units. It was in there somewhere, trapped in its own head, maybe aware, maybe not. Not that it matters. None of us had a choice.”

— Martha Wells

138. “At thirty-seven hours since arrival, I sat up. I said, aloud, “That was stupid.” Everything was clear, sharp. Note to self, never, ever jump into a gunship with a bot pilot and fight off a construct Attacker code again. You almost deleted yourself, Murderbot.”

— Martha Wells

139. “Pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy.”

— Martha Wells

140. “Why, thank you for your permission, Tremaine.” Tremaine made a derisive noise, unimpressed. “Somebody’s got to give you permission, if you won’t give it to yourself.”

— Martha Wells

141. “I looked down. I was dripping onto the floor, a mix of blood and fluid. I hate it when I leak.”

— Martha Wells

142. “I can’t do even the half-assed version of this stupid job if I have to talk to humans.”

— Martha Wells

143. “The humans hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night, from the crowding and the strong possibility of dying.”

— Martha Wells

144. “Yeah, good luck with that. Trying to get humans not to touch dangerous things was a full-time job.”

— Martha Wells

145. “The HubSystem that controlled their habitat, that they were dependent on for food, shelter, filtered air, and water, was trying to kill them. And in their corner all they had was Murderbot, who just wanted everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day.”

— Martha Wells

146. “It looked like a clip from an action series, right before something drastic happened. Then something drastic happened.”

— Martha Wells

147. “I’d have to leave the armor behind. But maybe I wouldn’t need it anymore.”

— Martha Wells

148. “Nobody was touching my humans. To make sure of that I had to kill these two rogue Units. I could have pulled out at this point, sabotaged the hoppers, and got my humans out of there, leaving the rogue Units stuck on the other side of an ocean; that would have been the smart thing to do.”

— Martha Wells

149. “It’s not a baby, it’s a copy of me, made with code.” Amena folded her arms and looked intensely skeptical. “That you and ART made together, with code. Code which both of you are also made out of.”

— Martha Wells

150. “It’s one thing to poke a murderbot with a governor module; poking a rogue murderbot is a whole different proposition.”

— Martha Wells