Abaddon's Gate (The Expanse, #3)

by James S.A. Corey

We are bags of meat with a little electricity running through them. No ghosts, no spirits, no souls. The only thing that survives is the story people tell about you. The only thing that matters is your name.

Wear down the façade with too much work or fear or both, and whoever was waiting underneath came out.

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.

No matter how intense the situation, or how powerful the feelings, it was impossible to maintain a heightened emotional state forever. Eventually you’d just get tired and want it to end.

Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she’ll be haunted by what might be behind

If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they’d all still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another’s fur.

Heroism is a label most people get for doing shit they’d never do if they were really thinking about it.”

Nothing ever killed more people than being afraid to look like a sissy.”

God might not care about financial standing, but He was the only one.

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.

Certainty doesn’t have a place in violence.”

His words were full of hope and threat. Like the stars.