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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“When she’d been younger, one of her physicians had warned her against comparing her distress to other people’s. No matter what conclusion you drew, he said, you’d made a mistake.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“Have you ever realized something was doing you permanent spiritual damage as you were doing it?”
― 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

“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

“We did not see the adversary for what he was, and we brought him into our home.”
― 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

“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

“Good and evil are constructs lesser beings build to create divisions in places where rigor and intelligence are insufficient.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“The genius of the Carryx is that we brought the peculiar and often idiosyncratic brilliance of a thousand different species into a central system of control. We”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“This is what I do instead of curl up on the floor weeping. I mean, except for the times when I curl up on the floor weeping. I think we all remember that. When I can’t make fun of it, I can’t do anything at all,”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“It’s the universe telling us that Ostencour’s plan is the right thing to do.” “Or the natural playing out of consequences,” Campar said, trying for lightness. “Hard to tell those apart sometimes.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“forcing himself to engage with the fear without looking away was the best inoculation he knew.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“My little Dafyd just hates anything telling him what to do. She’d been right. All his life Dafyd had felt an irrational need to pull left when everything was telling him to pull right. It was petulant and petty, a childish need to not be controlled, even by himself. It had gotten him into trouble more times than he remembered. But he also wasn’t scared of spiders anymore.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“All his life Dafyd had felt an irrational need to pull left when everything was telling him to pull right. It was petulant and petty, a childish need to not be controlled, even by himself.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods

“You will observe the enemy in action, and preserve those observations. We are not the only battle in the war, and if we must bend here to break them elsewhere, of course we will.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods