Abaddon's Gate (Expanse, #3)

by James S.A. Corey

What had been logical became dumb, and all it took was changing the context.

Holden was starting to feel like they were all monkeys playing with a microwave. Push a button, a light comes on inside, so it’s a light. Push a different button and stick your hand inside, it burns you, so it’s a weapon. Learn to open and close the door, it’s a place to hide things. Never grasping what it actually did, and maybe not even having the framework necessary to figure it out. No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.

“Things change, Red,” Amos said, “you let us know. Because I’ll still be happy to kill the shit out of her.”

Amos is always a mood.

A history professor at university had once told her, Violence is what people do when they run out of good ideas. It’s attractive because it’s simple, it’s direct, it’s almost always available as an option. When you can’t think of a good rebuttal for your opponent’s argument, you can always punch them in the face.

“Amos will make sure you’re not interrupted,” he finally said. “Right,” Bull said. “Tell them why that’s reassuring.” “Oh. Well, when Amos is angry he’s the meanest, scariest person I’ve ever met, and he’d walk across a sea of corpses he personally created to help a friend. And one of his good friends just got murdered by the people who are going to be trying to take this office.”

Jesus

“Oh,” Anna said. She was not a political creature. She felt that politics was the second most evil thing humanity had ever invented, just after lutefisk.