Pierce Brown Quotes

It is strange being in a crowd where no one knows your face or cares for your purpose. In Lykos, I would have been jostled by men I'd grown up with, run across girls I'd chased and wrestled with as a child. Here, other Colors slam into me and offer not even a faint apology. This is a city, and I do not like it. I feel alone.
Pierce Brown
You will fall to ruin because you believe that exceptions to the rule make new rules.
Pierce Brown
Darrow: "Does he really believe believe in magic?" I ask.Daxo Au Telemanus: "He says gnomes steals ear wax from him at night. Mother thinks he's been hit too many times in the head." Daxo backs away following his father. But he can't hide the his clever smile as he pops a jellybean into his mouth. And I see where the ones in my pocket came from. "I say he just lives in a more entertaining world than we do.
Pierce Brown
My chair rolls to a stop. his voice cut short, followed by a thump and sliding sound. My wheelchair rolls forward again. I look back and see Ragnar pushing it innocently along. Sevro isn't in the hallway behind us. I frown, wondering where he went, till he bursts out of a side passage."You! Troll!" Sevro shouts. "I'm a terrorist warlord! Stop throwing me. You made me drop my candy!" Sevro looks at the floor of the hallway. "Wait. Where is it? Dammit, Ragnar. Where is my peanut bar? You know how many people I had to kill to get that? Six! Six!" Ragnar chews quietly above me, and though I'm probably mistaken, I think I see him smile.
Pierce Brown
Rather a drink be my master than a man.
Pierce Brown
I still remember the flush of blood in her cheeks as she danced. She was all the raw colours of life, the crude beauty of nature. I am the human concept of beauty. Gold made soft and supple in man's form.
Pierce Brown
They believe civilization weakens natural selection. They do nature’s work so that we do not become a soft race.
Pierce Brown
Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.
Pierce Brown
The Golds dance in pairs,Obsidians in threes, Grays in dozens. We dance alone, because only alone do Helldivers drill.~Uncle Narol
Pierce Brown
You tell anyone I cried, I'll find a dead fish, put it in a sock, hide it in your room, and let it putrefy.""Fair enough.
Pierce Brown
And there's the beauty of space. A billion paths to choose.
Pierce Brown
There is a festival where we wear the faces of demons to ward evil spirits from our dead in the vale. Sometimes wefail.
Pierce Brown
Like a sheep invited to a banquet in his honor thrown by wolves.
Pierce Brown
Anyone who writes books is at least mostly an introvert. It’s amazing to be able to share that internalized part of myself, that little world that no one really knows about. I just wrote down it down on a piece of paper just to be crazy, and people loving that is so strange.
Pierce Brown
Sevro." I lean forward. "Your eyes..."He leans in close. "Do you like 'em?""Bloodydamn. Did you get Carved?""By the best in the business. Do you like 'em?""They're bloodydamn marvelous. Fit you like a glove."He punches his hands together. "Glad you said that. Cuz they're yours."I blanch. "What?""They're yours.""My what?""Your eyes!""My eyes...""Do you want the eyes back?" Sevro asks, suddenly worried. "I can give them back.""No!" I say. "It's just I forgot how crazy you are.""Oh." He laughs and slaps my shoulder. "Good. I thought it might be something serious. So I'm prime keeping them?""Finders keepers," I say with a shrug.
Pierce Brown
Slaves do not have the bravery of free men.
Pierce Brown
As we pretend to be brave, we become so.
Pierce Brown
I cannot escape it, what I’ve done, no matter how far Ifollow the tunnel. I am alone with my sin. This is why they rule. The Peerless Scarredknow that dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be outrun. They must beworn if one is to rule. This is their �rst lesson.
Pierce Brown
I am so small. A billion tons of durosteel and nanometal move through the heavens, and I have never been beyond Mars's atmosphere. They are like specks of silver in an ocean of ink. And I am so much less. But those specs could ravage Mars. They could destroy a moon. Those specks rule the ink.
Pierce Brown
Liars make the best promises.
Pierce Brown
... You have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.
Pierce Brown
I will learn to lead �eets. I will win. I will sharpen myself into asword. I will give my soul. I will dive to hell in hopes of one day rising to freedom. I willsacri�ce. And I will grow my legend and spread it amongst the peoples of all the worldsuntil I am �t to lead the armies that will break the chains of bondage, because I am notsimply an agent of the Sons of Ares. I am not simply a tactic or a device in Ares’sschemes. I am the hope of my people. Of all people in bondage.
Pierce Brown
She will not come back, but her beauty, her voice, will echo until the end of time. She believed in something beyond herself, and her death gave her voice power it didn’t have in life. She was pure, like your father. We, you and I” — he touches my chest with the back of his index finger — “are dirty. We are made for blood. Rough hands. Dirty hearts. We are lesser creatures in the grand scheme of things, but without us men of war, no one except those of Lykos would hear Eo’s song. Without our rough hands, the dreams of the pure hearts would never be built.
Pierce Brown
How could any boy know that freedom is lost the moment you become a man. Things start to count. To press in. Constricting slowly, inevitably, creating a cage of inconveniences and duties and deadlines and failed plans and lost friends.
Pierce Brown
Pity is not forgiveness, nor is gratitude absolution.
Pierce Brown
You will fall to ruin because you believe that exceptions to the rule make new rules. That an evil man can shed the trappings of wickedness because you want him to. Men do not Change... Learn the lesson now, so you don't have to learn it with a knife in your back later... Reputations exist for a reason.
Pierce Brown
The foolish families worry over blood. I care nothing for purity of family or ancestry. That is a vain thing. I care only for strength. What a man can do to other men, women.
Pierce Brown
Mustang...' I rest my hand on her wrist. Despite her strength, it's frail in my hands. Frail as the other girl's was when I held her in the deepmines. I couldn't help that girl. And now I feel like I can't help this woman. Would that my hands were meant to build. I would know what to say. What to do. Maybe in another life I would have been that man. In this one, my words, like my hands, are clumsy. All they can do is cut. All they can do is break.
Pierce Brown
My people sing, we dance, we love. That is our strength. But we also dig. And then we die. Seldom do we get to choose why. That choice is power. That choice has been our only weapon. But it is not enough.
Pierce Brown
Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence."He tells how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient names."Our Savagery began when our capital, Luna, rebelled against the tyranny of Earth and freed herself from the shackles of Demokracy, from the Noble Lie - the idea that men are brothers and are created equal." Augustus weaves lies of his own with that golden tongue of his. He tells of the Goldens' suffering. The Masses sat on the wagon and expected the great to pull, he reminds. They sat whipping the great until we could no longer take it. I remember a different whipping. "Men are not created equal; we all know this. There are averages. There are outliers. There are the ugly. There are the beautiful. This would not be if we were all equal. A Red can no more command a starship than a Green can serve as a doctor!"There's more laughter across the square as he tells us to look at pathetic Athens, the birthplace of the cancer they call Demokracy. Look how it fell to Sparta. The Noble Lie made Athens weak. It made their citizens turn on their best general, Alcibiades, because of jealousy. "Even the nations of Earth grew jealous of one another. The United States of America exacted this idea of equality through force. And when the nations united, the Americans were surprised to find that they were disliked! The Masses are jealous! How wonderful a dream it would be if all men were created equal! But we are not.It is against the Noble Lie that we fight. But as I said before, as I say to you now, there is another evil against which we war. It is a more pernicious evil. It is a subversive, slow evil. It is not a wildfire. It is a cancer. And that cancer is Decadence. Our society has passed from Savagery to Ascendance. But like our spiritual ancestors, the Romans, we too can fall into Decadence.
Pierce Brown
We never asked to bow. Who is he to say Red and Browns toiling to death is for the greater good? Who is he to say Pink children being harvested for rape, Obsidians and Grays for battle, is a necessity? How can he sit there and say that he alone knows what is best for me, for my family? It’s not his right
Pierce Brown
Life. All this. Why do they need to make us do this? Why do they treat us like we're their slaves?""Power.""Power isn't real. It's just a word.
Pierce Brown
Power is the crown that eats the head,”...
Pierce Brown
...power doesn’t shift. Power is resolute. It is the mountain, not the wind. To shift so easily is to lose trust.
Pierce Brown
Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.
Pierce Brown
Now I am their sword. And I do not forgive. I do not forget. So let him lead me onto his shuttle. Let him think he owns me. Let him welcome into his house, so I might burn it down. But then his daughter takes my hand, and I feel all the lies fall heavy on my shoulders. They say a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. They made no mention of the heart.
Pierce Brown
Words are weapons stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart.
Pierce Brown
I look at him for a moment. Words are a weapon stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart. I come from a people of song and dance. I don’t need him to tell me the power of words. But I smile nonetheless.
Pierce Brown
There is no peace for great men
Pierce Brown
In the densest places of man, humanity most easily breaks down
Pierce Brown
Sometimes I wonder if he were raised a Red and I a Gold if he wouldn't have ended up a better man than I am now, and I a worse man than he ever could be.For some reason I think I could have been capable of great evil.
Pierce Brown
Life is the most effective school ever created. Once upon a time they made children bow their heads and read books. It would take ages to get anything across." He taps his head. "But we have widgets and datapads now, and we Golds have the lower Colors to do our research. We need not study chemistry or physics. We have computers and others to do that. What we must study is humanity. In order to rule, ours must be the study of political, psychological, and behavioral science - how desperate human beings react to one another, how packs form, how armies function, how things fall apart and why. You could learn this nowhere else but here.
Pierce Brown
He always thinks because I'm reading, I'm not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted.
Pierce Brown
The Golds have everything, yet they demand sacrifices even from their own. This place is sick. This empire broken. It eats its kings, its queens, as hungrily as it does the paupers who mill its earth.
Pierce Brown
Freedom costs too much
Pierce Brown
Death isn't empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death. I say we break those chains. Break the chains of fear and you break the chains that bind us to the Golds, to the Society. Could you imagine it? Mars could be ours. It could belong to the colonists who slaved here, died here." Her face is easier to see as the night fades through the clear roof. It is alive, on fire. "If you led the others to freedom. The things you could do, Darrow. The things you could make happen." She pauses and I see her eyes are glistening. "It chills me. You have been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low.""You repeat the same damn points," I say bitterly. "You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn't. You say it's better to die on your feet. I say it's better to live on our knees.""You're not even listening!" she snaps. "We are machine men with machine minds, machine lives …" "And machine hearts?" I ask. "That's what I am?""Darrow …" "What do you live for?" I ask her suddenly. "Is it for me? Is it for family and love? Or is it just for some d
Pierce Brown
War is chaos. It always has been. But technology makes it worse. It changes the fear. At the Institute, I feared men. I feared what Titus and the Jackal could do to me. You see death coming there and can at least struggle against it. Here you don't have such luxury. Modern war is fearing the air, the shadows, fearing the silence. Death will com and I won't even see it. ~Darrow
Pierce Brown
Love and war. Same coin. Different sides. I'm too wrinkled for either.""Maybe war will breathe some life into your old bones.""Well, I tried love last month." He leans close. "Didn't work like it used to.""Too honest, Lorn." I can't help but laugh.
Pierce Brown
Treason is a matter of the date, Proctor
Pierce Brown
You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.
Pierce Brown
Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair
Pierce Brown
I didn't mind that it was always about you, Darrow. That was what burned Tactus, but not me. I'm not in love with you like Mustang. I don't worship you like Sevro or the Howlers. I was a true friend. I was someone who saw your light and your dark and accepted both without judgement, without agenda...
Pierce Brown
Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair.
Pierce Brown
Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver.” She makes sure I don’t speak.“Understand that. The only power they have is in death. The harder they die, the loudertheir voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife served her purpose.
Pierce Brown
s father's words. But they are as empty on his lips as they feel in my ears. This was has taken everything from him. I see in his eyes how broken he is. how terribly hard he is trying to be his father's son. If he could, he would choose to be back by the campfire we made in the highlands of the Institute. He would return to the days of glory when life was simple, when friends seemed true. But wishing for the past doesn't clean the blood from either of our hands.
Pierce Brown
Death is easy when you've already tried to find it.
Pierce Brown
Wisdom is found in the heart not the head.
Pierce Brown
Personally, I do not want to make you a man. Men are so very frail. Men break. Men die. No, I’ve always wished to make a god.
Pierce Brown