Quotes from Leviathan Wakes

“There's a right thing to do," Holden said.
"You don't have a right thing, friend," Miller said. "You've got a whole plateful of maybe a little less wrong.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“What kind of half-assed apocalypse are they running down there?” Amos said. “Give ’em a break. It’s their first.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Stars are better off without us.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Too many dots," Miller said. "Not enough lines.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“He hadn’t been aware he’d felt wrong until he suddenly felt right again.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“First off, get your shit together. Panic doesn’t help. It never helps. Deep breaths, figure this out, make the right moves. Fear is the mind-killer. Ha. Geek.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“The massive radiation exposure had failed to give him superpowers.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“His parents had raised him to believe that sex was something you did in private not because it was embarrassing, but because it was intimate.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“It was a real book— onionskin pages bound in what might have been actual leather. Miller had seen pictures of them before; the idea of that much weight for a single megabyte of data struck him as decadent.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Liquor doesn’t make you feel better. Just makes you not so worried about feeling bad.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Miller was staring at him like an entomologist trying to figure out exactly where the pin went.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“A hundred and fifty years before, when the parochial disagreements between Earth and Mars had been on the verge of war, the Belt had been a far horizon of tremendous mineral wealth beyond viable economic reach, and the outer planets had been beyond even the most unrealistic corporate dream. Then Solomon Epstein had built his little modified fusion drive, popped it on the back of his three-man yacht, and turned it on. With a good scope, you could still see his ship going at a marginal percentage of the speed of light, heading out into the big empty. The best, longest funeral in the history of mankind. Fortunately, he’d left the plans on his home computer. The Epstein Drive hadn’t given humanity the stars, but it had delivered the planets.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Posthuman. It was a word that came up in the media every five or six years, and it meant different things every time. Neural regrowth hormone? Posthuman. Sex robots with inbuilt pseudo intelligence? Posthuman. Self-optimizing network routing? Posthuman. It was a word from advertising copy, breathless and empty, and all he’d ever thought it really meant was that the people using it had a limited imagination about what exactly humans were capable of.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Everyone too busy trying to survive to spend any time creating something new.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“People always whispered when they were hiding. Wrapped in a space suit and surrounded by vacuum, Gomez could have been lighting fireworks inside his armor and no one would have heard it, but he whispered.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“I know it's none of my business, but I really wouldn't let her put you off. So you don't understand sex and love and women. Just means you were born with a cock. And this girl? Naomi? She seems like she's worth putting a little effort into it. You know?"
"Yeah," Holden said. Then: "Can we never talk about that again?"
"Sure.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“GOODY. MY SPLEEN IS COLLAPSING. HURRY UP.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“I don’t believe war ever does. It’s a madness that’s in our nature. Sometimes it recurs; sometimes it subsides.” “Sounds like a disease.” “The herpes simplex of the species?”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Stupid. Shortsighted. A man born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been. Miller’s”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“The pachinko machines lit them blue and green and shrieked in artificial delight.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“The abyss above him shone with unflickering stars. One of the dots of light was Earth. He didn’t know which one.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Fish and company start to smell after three days.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Tachi’s galley had a full kitchen and a table with room for twelve. It also had a full-size coffeepot that could brew forty cups of coffee in less than five minutes whether the ship was in zero g or under a five-g burn. Holden said a silent prayer of thanks for bloated military budgets and pressed the brew button. He had to restrain himself from stroking the stainless steel cover while it made gentle percolating noises.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“He’d seen unequivocally that the chaos he’d dedicated his life to holding at bay was stronger and wider and more powerful than he would ever be. No compromise he could make would be enough. His death-self was unfolding in him, and the dark blooming took no effort. It was a relief, a relaxation, a long, slow exhale after decades of holding it in.
He was in ruins, but it was okay, because he was dying.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Anyone can kill a planet from orbit,” Holden replied. “You don’t even need bombs. Just push anvils out the airlock. That thing out there could kill… Shit. Anything.”
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“There were two sides fighting—that was true enough—but they weren’t the inner planets versus the Belters. They were the people who thought it was a good idea to kill people who looked or acted differently against the people who didn’t.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Say what you will about organized crime, at least it’s organized.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Holden had once dated a Buddhist who said that death was merely a different state of being, and people only feared the unknown that lay behind that transition. Death without warning was preferable, as it removed all fear.
He felt he now had the counterargument.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Living on the surface of a planet, mass sucking at every bone and muscle, and nothing but gravity to keep your air close, seemed like a fast path to crazy.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

“Rebecca Byers, the comm officer on duty, could have been bred from a shark and a hatchet. Black eyes, sharp features, lips so thin they might as well not have existed. The story on board was that she’d taken the job to escape prosecution for killing an ex-husband. Holden liked her.”
― quote from Leviathan Wakes

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“Chantal is having a relationship with a sentence. Just one of those things. A chance meeting that grew into something important for the both of them.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from The Doll's House

“We’ll be like the MudWings,” Clay said proudly. “We stick together. No matter what happens. We’re a team, and we look after one another. Which means the first thing we have to do is find Starflight. The NightWings can’t just take him away. He’s one of us, and we’ll search the whole world until we find him. It’s time for us to get our friend ba —” He stopped as a heavy thump shook the ground and wings flapped to a stop behind him. The others were staring over his shoulder. “That better not be who I think it is,” said Clay. “Found him!” Glory said gleefully. Clay turned around. Starflight stood, blinking, in the waving grass just outside the trees.”
― Tui T. Sutherland, quote from The Dragonet Prophecy

“MY BETH.

Sitting patient in the shadow
Till the blessed light shall come,
A serene and saintly presence
Sanctifies our troubled home.
Earthly joys and hopes and sorrows
Break like ripples on the strand
Of the deep and solemn river
Where her willing feet now stand.

O my sister, passing from me,
Out of human care and strife,
Leave me, as a gift, those virtues
Which have beautified your life.
Dear, bequeath me that great patience
Which has power to sustain
A cheerful, uncomplaining spirit
In its prison-house of pain.

Give me, for I need it sorely,
Of that courage, wise and sweet,
Which has made the path of duty
Green beneath your willing feet.
Give me that unselfish nature,
That with charity divine
Can pardon wrong for love's dear sake—
Meek heart, forgive me mine!

Thus our parting daily loseth
Something of its bitter pain,
And while learning this hard lesson,
My great loss becomes my gain.
For the touch of grief will render
My wild nature more serene,
Give to life new aspirations,
A new trust in the unseen.

Henceforth, safe across the river,
I shall see for evermore
A beloved, household spirit
Waiting for me on the shore.
Hope and faith, born of my sorrow,
Guardian angels shall become,
And the sister gone before me
By their hands shall lead me home.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from Good Wives

“Do I detect a renewal of your fighting spirit? I'm so glad. To tell the truth, I've been getting quite bored. Bring it on, Grace--I'm waiting for you.”
― B.A. Paris, quote from Behind Closed Doors

“He scarcely saw his parents. When Christopher was small, he was terrified that he would meet Papa out walking in the Park one day and not recognize him.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from The Lives of Christopher Chant

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