The Churn Quotes

“People like us? We aren’t righteous. But we can pretend to be, if we want, and that’s almost the same as if it were true.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Will you be back?” Lydia said. She hadn’t meant to, because she knew in her heart, in her bones, and deeper than that what the answer was. Timmy smiled at her for the last time. I take it back, she thought. Kill him. Kill the boy. Kill everyone else in the world. Shoot babies in the head and dance on their bodies. Any atrocity, any evil, is justified if it keeps you from leaving me.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Burton’s misfortune was to be born where and when he was, in a city of scars and vice, in an age when the division in the popular mind was between living on government-funded basic support or having an actual profession and money of your own.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Sex was meaningless, and so it could mean anything.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“It was a perfunctory gesture, meaningful only in retrospect, as so many last kisses are.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Liev Andropoulous!” the boy shouted. “You are under arrest for racketeering, slavery, and murder! You are not required to participate in questioning without the presence of an attorney or union representative!” Tiny flecks of spittle dotted the inside of the face shield. The boy’s wide eyes were almost jittering with fear. Liev sighed. “Ask me,” he said slowly, enunciating very clearly, “if I understand.” “What?” the boy shouted. “You’ve told me the charges and made the questioning statement. Now you have to ask me if I understand.” “Do you understand?” the boy barked, and Liev nodded. “Good. Better,” Liev said. “Now go fuck yourself.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Burton had sent Timmy to collect a debt, Timmy had killed the man instead, and Burton hadn’t cut him loose. Two points defined a line, but three defined the playing field. Burton didn’t always have need of boys like Timmy, but sometimes he did. Right now, he did. Lydia sighed. The churn was coming.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Baltimore was Earth writ small, crowded and bored. Its citizens were caught between the dismal life of basic and the barriers of class, race, and opportunity, vicious competition and limited resources, that kept all but the most driven from a profession and actual currency.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Amos Burton was a tall, stocky, pale-skinned man with an amiable smile, an unpleasant past, and a talent for cheerful violence. He left Baltimore to its dynamic balance of crime and law, exotics and mundanity, love and emptiness. The number of people who knew him and loved him could be counted on one hand and leave most of the fingers spare, and when he was gone, the city went on without him as if he had never been.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Very few people stood wholly for the law or wholly against it, and so for them the catastrophe of the churn was an annoyance to be avoided or endured or else a titillation on the newsfeeds. That it was a question of life and death for other people spoke in its favor as entertainment.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“The risk devolved on the little guy. Shit rolling downhill, as it had since the beginning of time.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Anyone who had not had his determination, ruthlessness, and luck deserved pretty much whatever shit he handed to them.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Her lifetime was a fabric woven of losses, and she saw now that all of them had been practice, training her to teach her how to bear this pain like a boxer bloodying knuckles to make them strong and numb. All her life had been preparation for bearing this single, unbearable moment.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“The innocence and vulnerability that his body managed to project while still being an instrument of violence.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“the odd peace of roommates, intimate in all things and nothing.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Outside, the city glowed, the violence and bustle made calm and beautiful by even such a small distance. The wail of the sirens and angry blat of the security alerts became a kind of music there, transformed by the mystical act of passing above waves.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“My spirit animal is the snake," she said as they walked south together. They went side by side, but not touching. "I shed my skin. I just let it slough away.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“In the meantime, he moved from one place to the next. He told people he would go one place, and then arrived at another. He considered all his habits with the uncompromising eye of a predator, and killed the ones with flaws. Anything that connected him with the patterns of the past was a vulnerability, and wherever possible, he chose to be invulnerable. It wasn’t the first time he’d been through this. He was good at it.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“She was growing old, yes. There was gray in her hair now. Lines at the corners of her eyes, the first faint liver spots on the backs of her hands. She told herself they were the evidence of her success. Too many of her friends had never had them. Never would. Her life had been a patchwork of love and violence, and the overlap was vast.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Oestra hoisted his eyebrows and hunched forward, elbows on the table. The kids running unlicensed games by the waterfront weren’t coming up with the usual take. One of the brothels had been hit by an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant syphilis; one of the youngest boys, a five-year-old, had it in his eyes. Burton’s neighbor to the north—an Earthbound branch of the Loca Griega—were seeing raids on their drug manufacturing houses. Burton listened with his eyelids at half-mast. Individually, no one event mattered much, but put together, they were the first few fat raindrops in a coming storm. Oestra knew it too.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“You thought you could take me, you dumbfuck piece of shit?” Burton spat into Timmy’s ear. “You thought you were tougher than me? I owned your momma, boy. You’re just second-generation property.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Unable to use it with Timmy on his neck, Oestra dropped the shotgun and twisted, trying to get his arms and legs under himself, trying to get the leverage to push Timmy back. Timmy reached down and hooked his finger into the gunman’s left eye, bracing the head with his knee and turning his wrist until he felt the eyeball pop.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“her almost-son and sometime-lover”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“New job?” he asked. “New job,” Burton said. “I know you and Erich grew up together. Is this going to be a problem for you?” “Nope,” Timmy said, slipping the gun into his pocket. There hadn’t even been a pause. “You’re sure?” “Sure, I’m sure. I get it. They’ve got him in the system now. If they get him too, there’s all kinds of things he compromises. If they can’t get him, nothing gets compromised, and I’m the only guy who can get close to him without him seeing it coming.” “Yes.” “So I kill him for you,” Timmy said. He could have been saying, So I’ll pick up dinner on my way. There was no bravado in it. Burton sat, tilted his head. The friendly smile and the empty eyes met him. “All right, I’m curious,” Burton said. “Did you game this? This was your plan?” “Shit no, chief,” Timmy said. “This here’s just happy coincidence.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Even in the first morning after the catastrophe began, security teams were calling on Liev’s underlings, sweeping them up for questioning. Some, they held. Others, they released.  Burton had no way of knowing which of those who had been set free had cut deals with security and which had been lucky enough to slip through the net. It hardly mattered. That branch of the business had been compromised, and so it would die.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“She pulled a sheer yellow scarf over her hair, swathed her neck, and tied it at her sternum, the ironic echo of her old hijab.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“The catastrophe began four days later. Quietly, and with near-military precision, the city opened a contract with Star Helix security. Soldiers from across the globe arrived in small groups and sat through debriefings. The plan to end the criminal networks operating in Baltimore would be announced after the fact, or at least after the first wave. The thought, widely lauded by the self-congratulatory minds in administration, was to take the criminal element by surprise. In catching them flat-footed, the security teams could cripple their networks, break their power, and restore peace and the rule of law.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“Everywhere, all through the city, space was at a premium. Extended families lived in decaying apartments designed for half as many. Men and women who couldn’t escape the cramped space spent their days at the screens of their terminals, watching newsfeeds and dramas and pornography and living on the textured protein and enriched rice of basic.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“As soon as he took his chair, the waitress came over, her eyebrows raised, as if he were a new customer. He waved her away. There was something about sitting at an empty table in full view of hungry men and women that Burton enjoyed. What you want, I can take or I can leave, it said. All I want is to keep your options for myself. Erich and Oestra sat. “That boy,” Burton said, letting the words take on an affected drawl, “is some piece of work.” “Yeah,” Oestra said. “He’s good at what he does,” Erich said. “He’ll get better.” Burton was quiet for a long moment. A man at the front door pointed an angry finger toward Burton’s table, demanding something of the waitress. She took the stranger’s hand and pushed it down. The angry man left. Burton watched him go. If he didn’t know any better, this wasn’t the place for him.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ve known Timmy since forever, yeah? He doesn’t do anything unless there’s a reason.” “Well,” Burton replied, pulling the word out to two syllables. “If it’s since forever, I guess that makes it all right.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Churn