The sex, he said. I just wanted to make sure that we were okay. That things were all right between us.Well, she said, orgasm does release a lot of oxytocin, so I’m probably more fond of you than befor...
He’s using you as his external, aftermarket conscience.
It felt like waking up over and over without falling sleep in between.
The problem, of course, with the idea of nature versus nurture was that it posed a choice between determinisms.
The fact had become as invisible to him as someone on Earth thinking about being held to a spinning celestial object by nothing more than mass, shielded from the fusion reaction of the sun by only dis...
The closest analogy, the one her brain reached for and rejected and reached for again, was splashing into a lake. It was cold, but not cold. There was a smell, rich and loamy. The smell of growth and...
That seemed to be the human pattern—reach out to the unknown and then make it into the sort of thing you left in the first place. In Holden’s experience, humanity’s drive out into the universe was may...
Later," Amos said, "when you're wishing we had this stuff, I am going to merciless in my mockery. And then we'll die.
No one lived forever. But you fought for every minute you could get. Bought a little more with a lot of hard work.
Dead’s not good, but at least it’s simple.
And somehow, that changed everything about sex. The movements might all be the same, but the desire to communicate affection rather than demonstrate prowess changed what everything meant.
And ... and what is civilisation if it isn’t people talking to each other over a goddamned beer?
Stupid. Shortsighted. A man born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been. Miller’s
No one’ll see us coming, Han said. And everyone dies sometime.Not comforting.The alternative is we go spend a bunch of time waiting for you to come up with some other plan that doesn’t work.
It was his job to expect the worst of humanity, including myself.
Either help or give up. Right now devil's advocate is just another name for asshole.
There’s a dignity in consequences.
See, this is why I can’t ever be in command, she said. Don’t like making tough calls with incomplete information? More I’m not suicidally irresponsible, she replied,
Nothing wrong with a little optimism, long as it doesn’t set policy....
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 rea...