Daniel Abraham: Human

““Stop,” Holden said. “I don’t care. I don’t want to hear any more of your stories about how being a cop makes you wiser and deeper and able to face the truth about humanity. As far as I can tell, all it did was break you. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Dresden and his Protogen buddies thought they could choose who lives and who dies. That sound familiar? And don’t tell me it’s different this time, because everyone says that, every time. And it’s not.””

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 43 (p. 437)

Truth , Time

“He considered recording it. His suit would be able to make a simple visual file and stream the data out in real time. But no. This was his moment. His and Julia’s. The rest of humanity could guess what it had been like if they cared.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 48 (p. 488)

Time

“When, Miller wondered, does someone stop being human? There had to be a moment, some decision that you made and before it, you were one person, and after it, someone else…If he’d seen it in someone else—Muss, Havelock, Sematimba—he wouldn’t have taken more than a minute to realize they’d gone off the rails. Since it was him, he had taken longer to notice. But Holden was right. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost himself.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 28 (p. 284)

Decision , Personality

“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 calculus of all human power was changing, and the models she used to make sense of it shifted with them, and she had to keep reminding herself that the past was a different place. She didn’t live there anymore.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Epilogue (p. 576)

Sense , Past , Making love , Change

“Human brains needed an answer, even if they had to make up something they knew was bullshit.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 22 (p. 219)

Making love

“She was not a political creature. She felt that politics was the second most evil thing humanity had ever invented, just after lutefisk.”

Daniel Abraham

Abaddon's Gate (2013), Epilogue (p. 538)

Evil

“It was a lesson he’d never forgotten. That humans only have so much emotional energy. No matter how intense the situation, or how powerful the feelings, it was impossible to maintain a heightened emotional state forever. Eventually you’d just get tired and want it to end.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Abaddon's Gate (2013), Chapter 22 (p. 230)

Feeling

“Theological anthropology is a lot simpler when humans are the only ones with souls.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Abaddon's Gate (2013), Chapter 12 (p. 129)

Soul

“It took his breath away. The elegance and functionality of the structure lay out before him, as beautiful and simple and effective as a leaf or a root cluster. To have something so much like the fruits of evolution, but designed by human minds, was awe-inspiring. It was the pinnacle of what creativity meant, the impossible made real.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Caliban's War (2012), Chapter 31 (p. 344)

Beauty

“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.”

Daniel Abraham

Epilogue (p. 525)
Nemesis Games (2015)

Intelligence , Law

“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.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 30 (p. 317)

People , Country

“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.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 27 (pp. 291-292)

“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.”

Daniel Abraham

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 4 (p. 42)

Animals , Learning , Dead , Food

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

Daniel Abraham

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 1 (p. 20)

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

Daniel Abraham

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 1 (p. 18)