Dack Powell

“The madness eventually burned itself out, the the embers will always glow.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“No, sir, you don’t. That’s my point. I’ve watched you seduce a lot of women, and I know how you do it. You get fixed on her, you get excited by her. Then you convince yourself that the two of you have some kind of special connection and by the time you believe it, she usually thinks it’s true too. And then you sleep together for a while, and the connection gets a little faded. One or the other of you says something like 'professional' or 'appropriate boundaries' or starts worrying what the crew will think, and the whole thing slides away. Afterwards they still like you. All of them. You do it all so well they don’t even feel like they get to hate you for it."
“That’s not true.”
“It is. And until you figure out that you don’t have to love everyone you bed down with, I’m never going to know whether you love me or just want to bed down. And I won’t sleep with you until you know which it is. The smart money isn’t on love.”
― James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

“It was camaraderie writ large. A synonym for loyalty that was stronger than the concept that it echoed. (Alex's) experience of real family, of blood relations, was a lot more like having a lot of people who had all wound up on the same mailing list without knowing why they had signed up for it.”
― James S.A. Corey, Nemesis Games

“It's not just you, this. It’s the basic problem with religion, be it Jesus or Vishnu or God Emperors. Ideological purity never survives contact with the enemy.”
― James S.A. Corey, Memory's Legion