“There was a button," Holden said. "I pushed it."
"Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn't it?”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“This is as good as it gets. Can’t expect everyone to be on the same page. We’re still humans after all. Some percentage of us are always going to be assholes.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Looking back through history, there are a lot more men who thought they were Alexander the Great than men who actually were.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Here’s the thing,” Amos said. “If you did go in there, you might feel like you had to do something. And then I might feel like I had to do something. And then we’d all be doing things, and we’d all wind up having a worse day, just in general.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Murtry swung first, so technically, that was self-defense. And if I’d wanted him dead, don’t you think he’d be dead? It’s not like I quit hitting him because I was tired.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“What did you do?” Fred asked. “There was a button,” Holden said. “I pushed it.” “Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn’t it?”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Well, mostly I’m a mechanic. But the idea that the UN has a file on me somewhere that lists me as the Rocinante’s killer? That’s kind of awesome.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“A bicycle?” Amos leaned on the breakfast bar. “Sure. They don’t need fuel, they don’t get sick. Most of the repairs, you can handle on your own. You’re looking for post-apocalyptic transportation, bikes are the way to go.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“No, it wasn’t. It was the scariest fucking answer to Fermi’s paradox I can think of. Do you know why there aren’t any Indians in your Old West analogy? Because they’re already dead. The whatever-they-were that built all that got a head start and used their protomolecule gate builder to kill all the rest. And that’s not even the scary part. The really frightening part is that something else came along, shot the first guys in the back of the head, and left their corpses scattered across the galaxy. The thing we should be asking is, who fired the magic bullet?”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“We’re not making any official statements, especially when James Holden’s in the room. No offense, but your track record for blurting information at inopportune moments is the stuff of legend.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Alien superweapons were used,” Alex said, walking into the room, sleep-sweaty hair standing out from his skull in every direction. “The laws of physics were altered, mistakes were made.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Alex’s experience of real family—of blood relations—was more like having a lot of people who had all wound up on the same mailing list without knowing quite why they signed up for it.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“The pleasantries were just ritual, but ritual was important. In Amos’ experience the more dangerous any two people were, the more carefully polite their social interactions tended to be. The loud, blustering ones were trying to get the other guy to back down. They wanted to stay out of a fight. The quiet ones were figuring out how to win it.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“He kind of wished he had a hat.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Hey,” she said. “Hey.” “So I have a thing.” “Is it a thing I can fix?” Holden asked. “Point me at the thing.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Avasarala laughed at that. “True. But if he’s sending his hired killer to Earth, we—” “Wait, what?” “If Holden was—” “Forget Holden. You called me his hired killer. Is that how you guys think of me? The killer on Holden’s payroll?” Avasarala frowned. “You’re not?” “Well, mostly I’m a mechanic. But the idea that the UN has a file on me somewhere that lists me as the Rocinante’s killer? That’s kind of awesome.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“That Holden is up to something? Have you met that guy? He’s never done anything secretly in his life.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Amazing how much we’ve managed to do, considering how we’re doing it all with jumped-up social primates and evolutionary behaviors from the Pleistocene.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“She sat at the dining table, a steaming mug of tea in front of her, a distant look in her eyes. Holden couldn’t tell if she was melancholy or solving a complex engineering problem in her head. Those looks were confusingly similar.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Things changed, and they didn’t change back. But sometimes they got better.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Probably the most common last words that day were going to be Huh, that’s weird. That or Oh shit.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Realizing you’ve got shit on your fingers is the first step toward washing your hands.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“The birds, on the other hand, were going crazy. They filled the air with chirps and trills and songs. It was probably sparrow for Holy shit, what’s going on, we’re all gonna die, but it sounded pretty.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“He’s using you as his external, aftermarket conscience.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Did he kill anyone?” Erich asked. When neither guard answered, he said, “Then he’s still being polite.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“It was strange how a person could be so vitally important in your life, and yet you had nothing to say to them when they weren’t sharing the same air.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“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 underwear. So your warrant bullshit? You can roll that up and fuck it. Now tell me why I’m here.”
“You know just ’cause you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should. I don’t look great in frills.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“Never heard of ’em.”
“Yeah, you have, but context is everything, ain’t it?”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“And even then, she hadn’t wanted to die. She’d just wanted it to be over. To be free of it all. For the pain and guilt to be over. And the feeling of being trapped. She might have been able to stand all the rest of it, but not the sense of being caught.”
― quote from Nemesis Games
“On most of the occasions when I visited the Ufford, halls and reception rooms were so utterly deserted that the interior might almost have been Uncle Giles's private residence. Had he been a rich bachelor, instead of a poor one, he would probably have lived in a house of just that sort: bare: anonymous: old-fashioned: draughty: with heavy mahogany cabinets and sideboards spaced out at intervals in passages and on landings; nothing that could possibly commit him to any specific opinion, beyond general disapproval of the way the world was run.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement
“When I was first at court and he was the young husband of a beautiful wife, he was a golden king. They called him the handsomest prince in Christendom, and that was not flattery. Mary Boleyn was in love with him, Anne was in love with him, I was in love with him. There was not one girl at court, nor one girl in the country, who could resist him. Then he turned against his wife, Queen Katherine, a good woman, and Anne taught him how to be cruel.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Boleyn Inheritance
“There is much to love, and that love is what we are left with. When the bombs stop dropping, and the camps fall back to the earth and decay, and we are done killing each other, that is what we must hold. We can never let the world take our memories of love away, and if there are no memories, we must invent love all over again.”
― Louise Murphy, quote from The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
“Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe and what, in fact, they do believe, as demonstrated by their actions. A religion of brotherhood and mildness which daily murders those who disagree with its doctrines can only be thought hypocrite, or worse.”
― Gore Vidal, quote from Julian
“he was the heir to a fortune earned principally by a quack medicine known as “Saint Elmo’s Remedy.” It was grain alcohol dyed purple, flavored with cloves and sarsaparilla root, and laced with opium and cocaine. As the joke goes: It was absolutely harmless unless discontinued.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick
Women
Nevermore
Kindred
The Rise of Nine
The Long Dark Tea-Ti...
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