Tiamat's Wrath (The Expanse, #8)

by James S.A. Corey

When the king says, Come work for me, there aren’t many paths to No.

heading toward battle, examining his life as he rushed toward its possible end. Who am I? Did the things I accomplished matter? Will I leave the universe a better place than I found it? If I don’t come back, what are my regrets? What are my victories?

That’s the thing about autocracy. It looks pretty decent while it still looks pretty decent. Survivable, anyway. And it keeps looking like that right up until it doesn’t. That’s how you find out it’s too late.

Growing older was a falling away of everything that didn’t matter. And a deepening appreciation of all the parts that were important enough to stay.

The real horror was that once the bargain was struck, the devil didn’t cheat. He gave you exactly and explicitly all that had been promised. And the price was your soul.

There’s a moment that everyone eventually experiences when they see that their parents are just people. That these mythic figures in their lives are also struggling and guessing. Doing their best without knowing for certain what their best is.”

That was the thing about hubris. It only became clear in retrospect.

Playing defense means being endlessly ground down. Someday something will get through.

She remembered a myth about someone wishing for eternal life, but forgetting to ask for youth to go with

“Father Caesar. He used to say that when you went too far too fast, your soul took some time catching up to you.”