Cibola Burn

Imported from: Clippings/Corey-Cibola-Burn.md

Notes built from this: corey-the-expanse

Author: James S. A. Corey Source: My Clippings.txt

Highlights

“Once is never. Twice is always.”

“There’s a dignity in consequences.”

“Later, when you’re wishing we had this stuff, I am going to be merciless in my mockery. And then we’ll die.”

“A person can fail the people they love just by being who they are.”

“Or was that fatalism another good move in design space? Did the universe evolve eyes and wings and sense organs and bitter amusement at the prospect of death all the same way?”

“If you don’t have the data you need, play with the data you have, see if something comes out of it.”

“One of my teachers back in school always used to say that contagion was the one absolute proof of community. People could pretend there weren’t drug users and prostitutes and unvaccinated children all they wanted, but when the plague came through, all that mattered was who was actually breathing your air.”

“You want a shadow, you got to have light and something to get in its way.”

“It’s not that bad. Conspiracy theories come up whenever people feel like the universe is too random. Absurd. If it’s all an enemy plot, at least there’s someone calling the shots.”

“That was the danger of being old and a politician. Habits outlived the situations that created them. Policies remained in place after the situations that inspired them had changed.”

“The usual state of nature is recovering from the last disaster,” she said. It was a truism of ecological biologists, and she said it the way a religious person might pray. To make sense of what she saw. To comfort herself. To give the world some sense of purpose or meaning. Species rose in an environment, and that environment changed. It was the nature of the universe, as true here as it had been on Earth.”

“No, baby, it’s okay,” he shook his head against […]

Page 174 · Location 2543–2544 · 2019-03-10

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