The Mercy of Gods Quotes

“I think some important scientific questions have finally been answered. Alien life exists, and they are assholes.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Life went on. That was the terrible thing. They were ripped out of their world, their lives, their sense of who and what they were. Their history. They were killed, or made to watch the people they loved die. And then, at some point, they were hungry. Thirsty. They had to piss. Someone told a joke, and they laughed, however darkly. They washed dishes. Changed clothes. Held funerals. It felt like it should have stopped, all of it, and it didn’t. The slow, low pulse of being alive kept making its demands, no matter what. However bad it was, however mind-breaking and strange and painful, the mundane insisted on its cut.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Preservation is irrational because it glorifies what cannot be. The universe is in constant change from the smallest measures to the greatest. To cling to one state of being over any others is foolish and futile and doomed.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“It’s a little hard using your brain to take accurate readings of itself. Fundamentally bad data.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“There’s always hope for something. Just not always… not always what we want.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“My brain is doing a million things without asking me first. That’s normal, and usually it’s fine. Right now, I hate it. And hating it doesn’t change it either.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Finches,” Campar said. “Lovely to look at, pretty to listen to, but if they get sick they keep it hidden until they drop over dead. Academic researchers are all finches.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“However bad it was, however mind-breaking and strange and painful, the mundane insisted on its cut.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“A leader must be utterly decisive, especially when giving orders that conflict with the ones from the day before.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Of all the unthinkable events in his life, the fact that the universe had put him beside this woman felt the most unlikely.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Dafyd is asking the Carryx about the execution of the old Human librarian. The Carryx replied:

"There was no punishment. There is no punishment. That one was given great honor, being touched by the Sovran. But it was saved by an animal. There is no place in the moieties for a Carryx that was saved by an animal. Do you understand?”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“It’s his pathological move. I get it.” “I don’t know the term.” “It’s the thing people do when they’re working on instinct. When they’re stressed and overwhelmed, there’s something they go to by reflex. Tonner focuses down on something small enough to control. Campar makes jokes. Jessyn withdraws. Everyone has something.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Its design is like water, flowing through whatever channels the universe provides it. It understands now that water also carries what it passes through. It has already traded purity for experience, and there is no path back. Nor should there be.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Humans are structureless. They live in conflict with themselves and each other. Their great genius is rationalization: lying into mirrors until they bully and seduce themselves into things they would never otherwise do. They are creatures of self-delusion, regret, and desire.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“The impulse that required the least effort from him won,”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Jessyn knew the medicine was starting to work when her fantasies changed from suicide to murder.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Later, when he stood in the eye of a storm that burned a thousand worlds, he’d remember how it all started with Else Yannin’s hand on his arm and his need to give her a reason to keep it there.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“The alien’s back feet shuffled it forward as fast as its enemy was running. When they came close, the huge arms slammed together too quickly for Dafyd’s eyes to follow. The lone soldier dropped to their knees, then folded in a way unbroken spines didn’t fold, fell in a way intact rib cages didn’t fall, and slumped to the stone in an undifferentiated lump. The air around the soldier’s body still carried a faint pink mist, which Dafyd realized was atomized blood. Their rifle clattered to the stones.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Life went on. That was the terrible thing. They were ripped out of their world”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“think some important scientific questions have finally been answered. Alien life exists, and they are assholes.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“I simultaneously want more beer and also a little less beer than I’ve already had,”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Dafyd thought there should have been a limit. The universe could only change so many times, could only reveal so many unexpected, inconceivable aspects of itself before he got used to it. It could only ask so much of him before he became strong enough to do what was required”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Humans are structureless. They live in conflict with themselves and each other. Their great genius is rationalization: lying into mirrors until they bully and seduce themselves into things they would never otherwise do. They are creatures of self-delusion, regret, and desire. That is their way, and for a time we harnessed it as we did everything.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Normal people would succeed where she couldn't because she'd been born a little broken. But there was also a world outside her head that was filled with mystery and exploration and unexpected things to discover. Looked at in a wide enough frame, maybe her problems weren't so large. They just seemed that way when she held them up against her eyes where they'd block out all the light.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“in a constant generational argument over which group or subgroup, gender or culture or religion, suffered most at the hands of the others, as if the concept of justice were not narrative and abstract.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Ekur of the cohort Tkalal was subjugator-librarian for the sixteenth dactyl of the third limb of the twentieth exploratory body.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Dafyd on the Carryx:
"I'm going to learn everything about them. I'm going to figure out how to get in their heads. And I'm going to kill them all and burn their fucking towers to the ground. It's my war now.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“The swarm was designed as a tool of war. It was built to slip behind the defenses of the Carryx and expose the great enemy's weaknesses. It is still that,

It is also becoming something stranger”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Later, when he stood in the eye of a storm that burned a thousand worlds, he'd remember how it all started with Else Yannin's hand on his arm and his need to give her a reason to keep it there.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“cut a branch from a tree and carved the wood into a tool—an axe handle, a tentpole, whatever your will designed—you placed no moral judgment on the act, nor should you have. To do so would have been perverse. The tree had no power to stop you, and so it became a tool in your hand. What you did with a tree branch, we did with you and countless others before you. Why me? is not something the universe ever answers.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods