Cibola Burn (Expanse, #4)

by James S.A. Corey

Murtry’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “There’s a dignity in consequences.”

“Names matter, boss,” Amos said after a moment, a strange look on his big face. “Names change everything.”

Doors and corners are always dangerous, because

you’re moving into something without being sure what’s there. By the time you see the enemy, you’re exposed to them.”

Nothing proved fear like the effort of rejecting it.

He was both impressed and worried by anyone who had that level of self-awareness and control.

“The usual state of nature is recovering from the last disaster,” she said. It was a truism of ecological biologists,

and she said it the way a religious person might pray.

Holden had a sudden mental image of dragging the soon-to-be-blind Murtry out into the middle of the rain-soaked desert and abandoning him at the center of a swarm of the lethal slugs.

You’re like Peter Pan, she says. When a child died, Peter Pan would fall halfway with them. So they wouldn’t be scared.

Amos wore serious injury better than anyone else Holden knew.