I'm sorry you lost the suit,' he said. She shrugged.' At this point, it was mostly a metaphor anyway,' she said...

— James S.A. Corey

Intellectually he knows that the blood is being pressed to the back of his body, pooling in the back part of his cerebellum and flooding his kidneys. He hasn’t done enough medical work to know what that means, but it can’t be good.

— James S.A. Corey

In the artifacts that are conscious, memories of vanished lives still flicker. Tissues that were changed without dying hold the moment that a boy heard his sister was leaving home. They hold multiplication tables. They hold images of sexuality and violence and beauty. Furthermore, they hold the memories of flesh that no longer exists. Furthermore, they hold metaphors: mitochondria, starfish, Hitler’s-brain-in-a-jar, hell realm. Furthermore, they dream. Structures that were neurons twitch and loop and burn and dream. Images and words and pain and fear, endless.

— James S.A. Corey

Io, this is Admiral Wuhan of the Martian Congressional Republic Navy. You fire anything bigger than a bottle rocket, and we will glass the whole fucking moon. Do you read me?

— James S.A. Corey

It felt like waking up over and over without falling sleep in between.

— James S.A. Corey

It’s herding kittens. If kittens had a lot of guns and an overdose of neo-Libertarian property theory.

— James S.A. Corey

It throbbed with an inhuman power, tidal and deep and painful. Look at this too long, Elvis thought, and I will lose my mind in it. She took a step toward it, feeling the structures in the blackness respond to her. She felt as if she could see the spaces between molecules in the air, like atoms themselves had become a thin fog, and for the first time she could see the true shape of reality looming up just beyond her reach.

— James S.A. Corey

It was a mating dance only slightly more dignified than presenting like a mandrill, but endearing in its own fashion.

— James S.A. Corey

It was easy to make fun of the marines when they weren't listening. In Holden's navy days, making fun of warheads was as natural as cussing. But four marines had died getting him off the Tonnage, and three of them had made a conscious decision to do so. Holden promised himself that he'd never make fun of them again.

— James S.A. Corey

It was some of Solomon’s favorite music because it was dense and intellectually complicated, and he wasn’t expected to dance to it.

— James S.A. Corey