Nemesis Games

Quotes

1. Thing about civilization, it’s what keeps people civil. You get rid of one, you can’t count on the other.

   p. 316

2. 

   In order to be heard by the oppressing class, one must speak as a member of it. Not only the language, but the diction. The accusation of tyranny, however well-founded in fact, is dismissed unless it is delivered in the manner that power recognizes as powerful.

   p. 223

3. 

   She grinned to herself. Safe. That sounded like a good plan. She should try that for a change.

   p. 450

4. 

   Thing is, we’re humans. We’re tribal. More settled things are, the bigger your tribe is. All the people in your gang, or all the people in your country. All the ones on your planet. Then the churn comes, and the tribe gets small again.

   p. 317

5. 

   “You are a special flower.”

   “Well, sure. Just not used to anybody appreciating it.”

   p. 255

6. 

   Amazing how much we’ve managed to do, considering how we’re doing it all with jumped-up social primates and evolutionary behaviors from the Pleistocene.

   p. 325

7. 

   “I never thought I’d feel wind again. I never thought I’d be outside. It’s so beautiful.”

   Amos glanced around the ruins and shrugged. “That’s got a lot to do with context, I guess.”

   p. 280

8. 

   “Hell no,” Jim said when they were alone in the suite. “Absolutely no. No fucking way, no. There have got to be a billion different ways to say no, and I’d still have to cycle through them a couple times to really express the depth of no on this one. Clarissa Mao? On the Roci? How is that anything but a massive load of let’s-not-do-that?”

   p. 513

9. 

   But under it there was a faint, not-unpleasant odor of rotting seaweed and salt. The ocean, just outside, seeped into everything. An olfactory reminder to everyone passing through the Ellis Island of the space age that Earth was absolutely unique to the human race. The birthplace of everything. The salt water flowing in everyone’s veins first pulled from the same oceans right outside the building. The seas had been around longer than humans, had helped create them, and then when they were all dead, it’d take their water back without a thought.

   That, at least, wasn’t a lie.

   p. 76

10. 

    “It’s good being young,” he said, “but some people wear it better than others.”

    p. 432

11. 

    Computers, it seemed, could be programmed to do almost anything but sense when someone was up to no good.

    p. 76

12. 

    Sometimes when we make these distinctions, we’re really creating them more than describing anything that’s already there.

    p. 488

13. 

    She could remember the girl she used to be with fondness, but it wasn’t a youth she cared to recapture.

    p. 34

14. 

    “Long story, but the point is that if you hear hoofbeats in the distance, your first guess is that they’re horses, not zebras. And you’re hearing hoofbeats and jumping straight to unicorns.”

    “So what are you saying?”

    “I’m saying let’s go see if we can find some horses or zebras before we start a unicorn hunt.”

    p. 86

15. 

    “Seriously?”

    “Yep.”

    “That’s a really stupid way to go through life.”

    “It’s how most people do.”

    “Then most people are really stupid.”

    p. 460

16. 

    “My own kind,” she said. “Let me tell you about my own kind. There are two sides in this, but they aren’t inner planets and outer ones. Belters and everyone else. It’s not like that. It’s the people who want more violence and the ones who want less. And no matter what other variable you sample out of, you’ll find some of both.”

    p. 410

17. 

    “See, that’s what civilization is,” he said. “Bunch of stories. That’s all.”

    “So what if it is?” Peaches said. “We’re really good at telling stories.”

    p. 417

18. 

    “You look old, Fred.”

    “I feel old. But it’s better than the alternative.”

    p. 53

19. 

    Secrecy is the potting soil in which all this conspiracy shit grows. Trust me. The roaches don’t like it when you start shining a light on them.

    p. 140

20. 

    It was beautiful at this distance. The cities nothing but firefly twinkles on the dark side. Where the sun struck the Earth, almost nothing man had made was visible from the lunar orbit. The planet looked clean, unspoiled.

    It was a pretty lie.

    Seemed like a fact of the universe that the closer you got to anything, the worse it looked. Take the most beautiful person in the solar system, zoom in on them at the right magnification and they were an apocalyptic cratered landscape crawling with horrors. That’s what the Earth was. A shining jewel from space, up close a blasted landscape covered with mites living by devouring the dying.

    p. 74

21. 

    Something in the back of her head shifted. The serpent of learned helplessness long asleep starting to wake. She pretended it wasn’t there, in hopes that if she denied it enough, it wouldn’t exist.

    p. 225

22. 

    Holden couldn’t tell if she was melancholy or solving a complex engineering problem in her head. Those looks were confusingly similar.

    p. 56

23. 

    The aliens that sent the protomolecule hadn’t needed to destroy humanity. They’d given humans the opportunity to destroy themselves, and as a species, they’d leaped on it.

    p. 291

24. 

    “You think we’re going to die?”

    “Yup.”

    “Of this?”

    “Maybe.”

    p. 252

25. 

    Like the roaches and the rats, ants had learned to live with their human neighbors without much trouble. When the concrete of human cities spread across the globe and half the animals on Earth were on endangered lists, no one had worried about the ants. They were doing fine, thanks, and spilled fast food was just as plentiful and delicious as dead forest animals had once been.

    Adapt or die.

    p. 42

26. 

    There was no amount of double-checking that would ever prove that nothing had been missed.

    p. 379

27. 

    “Sometimes you don’t get redeemed,” she said, and here voice made it clear she’d thought about the question. Tired and strong at the same time. “Not every stain comes out. Sometimes you do something bad enough that you carry the consequences for the rest of your life and take the regrets to the grave. That’s your happy ending.”

    p. 233

28. 

    History’s made of surprises that seem obvious in retrospect.

    p. 296

29. 

    She knew intellectually that he was beautiful, the way the iridescent wings of a carrion fly would be.

    p. 309

30. 

    “I try to do the right thing, Holden. But there are times when it’s not obvious what that is.”

    “I agree with you,” Holden said. “Right up to the part where you tell me this is one of those times.”

    p. 298

31. 

    She felt like her soul was a handful of dice that were still rolling, and what came up would decide the shape that the rest of her life took.

    p. 514

32. 

    Realizing you’ve got shit on your fingers is the first step toward washing your hands.

    p. 209

33. 

    She wanted to care, but she didn’t. She didn’t have time.

    p. 338

34. 

    “So you’re trying to get me prepared for one of my crew dying?”

    “Historically speaking, humans are pretty much at a hundred percent on that.”

    p. 36

35. 

    His head hurt. His back hurt. He couldn’t feel his legs. It was all distressing until his mind came back enough for him to realize it meant he hadn’t died.

    p. 282

36. 

    Humanity was so flawed. Not just her, but everyone. Half the population was below average intelligence. Half below average dedication. Average adherence to duty. The cruel law of statistics. It was astounding that as a race they’d managed as much as they had.

    p. 525

37. 

    He told himself that, but he was getting less and less persuasive. Not knowing was the worst thing. The second-worst thing as being chased by a bunch of top-of-the-line warships that really wanted to kill you.

    p. 442

38. 

    That sounds like post hoc realpolitik rationalizing bullshit.

    p. 298

39. 

    Alex’s experience of real family—of blood relations—was more like having a lot of people who had all wound up on the same mailing list without knowing quite why they signed up for it.

    p. 163

40. 

    Militia motherfucker. NO TRESPASSING signs and everything. Took a potshot at me when I went to ask for some water. Kind of asshole that’s probably pissing himself with glee that the world went to shit and made his stashed guns and paranoia pay off.

    p. 316

41. 

    Things changed, and they didn’t change back. But sometimes they got better.

    p. 519

42. 

    You think you know what I am, she thought, but all you’ve got is stories.

    p. 222

43. 

    Bobbie sighed. “You know, a thousand of those stars out there are ours now. That’s like, what? Three ten-thousandths of a percent of our galaxy? That’s what we’re fighting over.”

    “You think?”

    “You don’t?”

    “Nah,” Alex said. “I figure we’re fighting over who gets the most meat from the hunt and first access to the water hole. Mating rights. Who believes in which gods. Who has the most money. The usual primate issues.”

    “Kids,” Bobbie said.

    “Kids?”

    “Yeah. Everyone wanting to make sure their kids have a better shot than they did. Or than everyone else’s kids. Something like that.”

    “Yeah, probably,” Alex said.

    p. 384

44. 

    The only right you have with anyone in life is the right to walk away.

    p. 270

45. 

    He wasn’t a man who reined in his curiosity well.

    p. 476

46. 

    “Panicking people for no reason—”

    “Panicking at this point isn’t unreasonable,” Monica said. “And deciding for people what they should get to know so they do what you think they should do? That isn’t how the good guys act, and you know it. It’s paternalistic, it’s condescending, and it’s beneath you. Maybe not them, The political movers and shakers. But it’s beneath you.”

    p. 350

47. 

    You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.

    p. 92

48. 

    We’re still humans after all. Some percentage of us are always going to be assholes.

    p. 20

49. 

    “You familiar with the land rush in North America?”

    “Yeah,” Holden said, then took a sip of Fred’s coffee. It was delicious. Earth grown, and rich. The privileges of rank. “I got your covered wagon reference. I grew up in Montana, you know. That frontier shit is still the story the people there tell about themselves.”

    “So you know that the mythology of manifest destiny hides a lot of tragedy. Many of those covered wagons never made it. And more than a few of the people who did wound up as cheap labor for the railroads, mines, and rich farmers.”

    Holden drank his coffee and watched the ship construction. “Not to mention all the people who were living there before the covered wagons showed up and gave everyone a nifty new plague.”

    p. 14

50. 

    Just once I’d like to be rewarded for my optimistic view of humanity.

    p. 18

51. 

    Some things stayed secrets even when you told them.

    p. 33

52. 

    Naomi couldn’t tell if she was more astounded by how much things had changed or how little.

    p. 32

That’s all the quotes.

52 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more