Quotes from Babylon's Ashes

“I thought if you told people facts, they'd draw their conclusions, and because the facts were true, the conclusions mostly would be too. But we don't run on facts. We run on stories about things. About people.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“Do we have a plan?”
“A couple.” Jim said.
“Either of them good?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. Just different flavors of terrible.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“History, Michio believed, was a long series of surprises that seemed inevitable in retrospect.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“Against all evidence, I keep thinking the assholes are outliers.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“You use a welding rig to weld things. You use a gun to shoot things. You use a Bobbie Draper to fuck a bunch of bad guys permanently up.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“I have killed, but I am not a killer because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren’t afraid.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.” At”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“Whoever screws up last loses. Whoever screws up second to last wins. That’s what war is.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“We’re not people,” he said. “We’re the stories that people tell each other about us.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“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.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“It’s a war. Wars aren’t like that.” “Aren’t like what?” Roberts said. “Aren’t like stories about wars,” Vandercaust answered solemnly. “Stories about wars come after.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“I mean, weird, dead alien technology with effects we don’t understand sweeping whole ships away without leaving a trace or explanation. That’s probably safe to play with, right?”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“I told you before that Johnson would be off the board, and he will be. We didn’t take him at Tycho, and we’ll take him somewhere else. He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time.” Rosenfeld looked down at his bulb, his body hunching a degree in submission. Filip had felt his father’s victory like it was his own. “Didn’t finish reading that book, did you?” Rosenfeld asked mildly.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“The same beautiful bullshit that everyone told themselves. That they were special. That they mattered. That some vast intelligence behind the curtains of reality cared what happened to them. And in all the history of the species, they’d all died anyway. “Attention,”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“The messages coming back flooded the comm buffers with rage and sorrow, threats of vengeance and offers of aid. Those last were the hardest. New colonies still trying to force their way into local ecosystems so exotic that their bodies could hardly recognize them as life at all, isolated, exhausted, sometimes at the edge of their resources. And what they wanted was to send back help. He listened to their voices, saw the distress in their eyes. He couldn't help, but love them a little bit.

Under the best conditions, disasters and plagues did that. It wasn't universally true. There would always be hoarders and price gouging, people who closed their doors to refugees and left them freezing and starving. But the impulse to help was there too. To carry a burden together, even if it meant having less for yourself. 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.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“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”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“Because he’s Amos. He’s like a pit bull. You know he could tear your throat out, but he’s loyal to a fault and you just want to hug him.” She”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“Anyway, that’s not what I meant when I said Marco decides when he wins. You don’t understand how slippery he can be. Whatever happens, he’ll shift so it was his plan all along. If he were the last person alive, he’d say we needed the apocalypse and declare victory. It’s what he is.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“Inaros isn’t going to chase after the Giambattista and Rocinante, because he’ll be distracted by the largest and most aggressive fleet action in history kicking his balls up into his throat.

By the time he understands what we were really after, it’ll be too late for him to do anything but hold his dick and cry. But I need to know that you’re in.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“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”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“But, Bobbie? Really, really don’t die out there.” “No one lives forever, sir,” Bobbie said, “but as long as it doesn’t compromise the mission, I’ll try to live through it.” “Thanks.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“All beautiful things should have just a little sorrow about them. Made them seem real.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“and the Mark Watney, out of Mars.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“It was like solving a complex math puzzle without any promise that an optimal solution existed.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“I thought if you told people facts, they’d draw their conclusions, and because the facts were true, the conclusions mostly would be too. But we don’t run on facts. We run on stories about things.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“You all right?” He smiled. “Why do you ask?” “Because you’re not all right,” she said.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“Keel-mounted rail gun,” Alex said with a grin. “—that scream of overcompensating for tiny, tiny penises, but might prove useful.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“Do we have a plan?” “A couple,” Jim said. “Either of them good?” “Oh, no. Not at all. Just different flavors of terrible.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“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.”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

“I thought if you told people facts, they’d draw their conclusions, and because the facts were true, the conclusions mostly would be too. But we don’t run on facts. We run on stories about things. About people. Naomi”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes

Popular quotes

“if you were always guided by courage, honor, self-respect, honesty, and compassion, and if you kept your mind and your heart open to the lessons that this world teaches you, then you would eventually understand the meaning of your existence, perhaps even in this world, but certainly in the next. Such a philosophy virtually guaranteed a brighter life, less shadowed by fear than the lives of those who were convinced of meaninglessness.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from False Memory

“You're a Dark One," said Anton. "All you see in everything is evil, treachery, trickery."

"All I do is not close my eyes to them," Edgar retorted. "And that's why I don't trust Zabulon. I distrust him almost as much as I do Gesar. I can even trust you more—you're just another unfortunate chess piece who happens by chance to be painted a different color from me. Does a white pawn hate a black one? No. Especially if the two pawns have their heads down together over a quiet beer or two."

"You know," Anton said in a slightly surprised voice, "I just don't understand how you can carry on living if you see the world like that. I'd just go and hang myself."

"So you don't have any counterarguments to offer?"

Anton took a gulp of beer too. The wonderful thing about this natural Czech beer was that even if you drank lots of it, it still didn't make your head or your body feel heavy... Or was that an illusion?

"Not a single one," Anton admitted. "Right now, this very moment, not a single one. But I'm sure you're wrong. It's just difficult to argue about the colors of the rainbow with a blind man. There's something missing in you... I don't know what exactly. But it's something very important, and without it you're more helpless than a blind man.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“I’ve known a lot of cops like him over the years. Veterans, usually. Older. They have experience, but they lack the humanity that would otherwise define them as good cops. The more they see, the less they feel. The less they care. They become cynical and bitter and apathetic. They give all cops a bad rap.”
― Linda Castillo, quote from Sworn to Silence

“Then I want you to run all of your words backward in your head and listen to them. Then put on my ears and listen to them again, and then tell me what you hear.
-Lydia to Seth”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from The Guardian

“Yes, I drank some of the ancient blood and it changed me. If I'm right...If the vellum is right, the world is dead. Everyone! But I was brought back to life by the blood.”
― Ted Dekker, quote from Forbidden

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