Nemesis Games (The Expanse Book 5)

Half the population was below average intelligence.

atavistic

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

A mother could love her daughter more than life itself the way the stories told, or she could hate the girl’s guts. Or both. A sister and brother could get along or fight each other or pass by in a kind of uncomfortable indifference. And if real relationship-by-blood shared descent could mean any of those things, maybe family was always a metaphor.

But looking back through history, there are a lot more men who thought they were Alexander the Great than men who actually were.”

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

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

Losing everything should at least be dignified.

The concrete replaces the forest. You get in its way, you get paved over. If you can find a way to live in the cracks, you can thrive anywhere. There were always cracks.