I keep warning you. Doors and corners, kid. That’s where they get you. Humans are too fucking stupid to listen. Well, you’ll learn your lessons soon enough, and it’s not my job to nursemaid the specie...
I am declaring this vessel in violation of laws and standards, Avasarala said. Cotyar, you’re witness to that. As you say, ma’am. All right, then. Bobbie. Get me control of this fucking ship.
Human violence as a kind of fractal—self-similar on all scales from bar fight to system-wide war. The buildup of insults and lost face that swelled over the course of an evening or a century. The shov...
Howdy, XO, he drawled. The old west affectation common to everyone from the Mariner Valley annoyed Holden. There hadn’t been a cowboy on Earth in a hundred years, and Mars didn’t have a blade of grass...
How many millions of times had people had this exact conversation before? How many wars had put two people together for a moment and then washed them apart? There had to be a tradition of it. A secret...
His first lover—Diane Redstone, her name was—had a phrase for moments like this. Nice woods, she’d say, and then get up out of their bed and go to work. He hadn’t understood where the saying came from...
He’d never been to military pilot school, but he knew that years of training had compartmentalized Alex’s brain into two halves: piloting problems and, secondarily, everything else.
Great men, they’re not like you or me. They have other needs. Other rhythms. It’s what sets them apart. But sometimes they go so far into the void we lose sight of them. They lose sight of us.
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 ki...
For another thing, we’re under martial law, so I can do very nearly whatever the fuck I want. Including march through your precious little ship there towing you along behind in a ball gag and lacy und...
Excitement and dread wore each other’s clothes, spoke in the same voice.
Everyone here was losing someone. His tragedy was just one among dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. By the time the cascade had run all the way out, maybe millions. When death grew that large, it stopped me...
Don’t, Naomi said, letting him go, pull your gun on anyone. They have guns. Guns plural. You have gun singular, which is why you will keep yours in your holster, or you’ll do this by yourself. That’s
Do you believe in the concept of forgiveness? In the possibility of redemption? In the value of every human life, no matter how tainted or corrupted? Fuck no, Bull said. I think it is entirely possibl...
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...
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....
Basic problem solving. If you don’t have the data you need, play with the data you have, see if something comes out of it. She’d
As soon as he took his chair, the waitress came over, her eyebrows raised, as if he were a new customer. He waved her away. There was something about sitting at an empty table in full view of hungry m...
All through human history, being a moral person and not being pulled into the dramatics and misbehavior of others had caused intelligent people grief. Dawes
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 gr...