Red Rising Saga Quotes

"Anything gentle that lives long, hides its stinger well."

"Tomorrow you scrub the latrines in every bathroom. Starting with mine. Real shame for you because curry is on the menu tonight.” He bends down. “You sad because you ain’t with a Drachenjäger squad? A mechman? Please, we eat those little bitches for breakfast. You’re lucky to be in our glorious presence.” He leans in even closer. “You want respect? Earn it."

"The mastery of music is its own reward,” Apollonius says. “The process by which one’s heart is entwined with masters of old. You do not know the toil, nor could you suffer it, and so you will never know the reward of understanding it.” He leans forward with slit eyes. “But by all means, dismiss it if you cannot comprehend. Art survived the Mongols. I wager it will survive you."

"My peril is thus: I am, and always have been, a man of great tastes. In a world replete with temptation, I found my spirit wayward and easy to distract. The idea of prison, that naked, metal world, crushed me. The first year, I was tormented. But then I remembered the voice of a fallen angel. ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.’ I sought to make the deep not just my heaven, but my womb of rebirth. I dissected the underlying mistakes which led to my incarceration and set upon an internal odyssey to remake myself. But—and you would know this, Reaper—long is the road up out of hell! I made arrangements for supplies. I toiled twenty hours a day. I reread the books of youth with the gravity of age. I perfected my body. My mind. Planks were replaced; new banks of cannon wrought in the fires of solitude. All for the next storm. Now I see it is upon me and I sail before you the paragon of Apollonius au Valii-Rath. And I ask one question: for what purpose have you pulled me from the deep?"

"I welcome all tests."

"I’ve now seen sharks fly and lions bark.” Alexandar laughs. “A lecture over genes from a Valii-Rath.” He leans forward, Apollonius’s plate still in his hands. “It would have been a severe pleasure to see my grandfather educate you on the merit of your genes."

"Ionian Golds believe mirrors promote vanity and obsession with the self. It’s a crime for even a lowColor to possess one."

"Grandmother thought talkative men the most hilarious of creatures, so busy projecting that they never notice anything until the jaws of the trap close around their legs. The key to learning, to power, to having the final say in everything, is observation. By all means, be a storm inside, but save your movement and wind till you know your purpose."

"Qualis rex, talis grex, (As the king so the people)"

"Do you know what inspires this loyalty to the Compact from all Colors? Honor. Honor in work. Honor in morality. Honor in principle and family. Our rules are harsh, but we obey them from Gold to Red. Romulus eliminated the rigged quotas in mines and the latifundia, has begun to phase out the Obsidian gods, and makes each man understand he is part of the same body. He has replaced subjugation with participation. Given a reason to sacrifice for the betterment of all. And it starts with us at this table, the head of the body."

"You all think you’re the chosen people. The keepers of the flame. Please. You know how many have thought that? You’re just like the rest. Too vain to realize the flame has gone out. The dream of Gold was dead before any of us were ever born. You want a war because you think the Rising is vulnerable? Because they still battle the Core? You don’t know Darrow. You don’t know his people. If you attack, you lose everything."

"You can’t pull a testimony from a corpse."

"If you gotta leave the field, do it in style"

"He turned to me at the foot of the stairs and told me he loved me. He’d done it a thousand times before. But it was different. ‘The boy has fled,’ he said. ‘In his place, I see a man.’ It was the first time I felt I deserved his love, to be his son. I realized how lucky I was, how blessed I was to have a father like him. In a world of terrible men, he was patient, kind. Noble in the way the stories told us to be as boys."

"who knows, perhaps the darkness will be kinder than the light."

"This duel isn’t for me. It’s for you. If you love me at all, you will let me die."

"a Chance, a young girl of the White caste carrying a white bag, leads a Justice, an old blind woman with milky eyes and translucent hair, onto the fighting floor. One day the little girl will grow old, and, if she reaches a state of transcendence, she will summon the courage to chemically blind herself and become a Justice herself. It is the ultimate honor of this hierophant race. Raised in monastic sanctuaries, they endeavor to divorce themselves from their humanity and embody the spirit of justice. Though many Whites in my grandmother’s Society aspired to more worldly and profitable heights."

"I expect no mercy. I ask only that if I fall, honor my bones and send them to the sun."

"I am Cassius au Bellona, son of Tiberius, son of Julia, Morning Knight, and my honor remains."

"Pulvis et umbra sumus (we are but dust and shadow). Akari, bear witness."

"Bellona, would that we had met as equals. You deserve better."

"We all deserve the worms, Raa"

"Mm, into the mouth of the beast,” Alexandar says from beside me on the bridge. “ ‘Then, even then, Cassandra’s lips unsealed the doom to come: lips by a god’s command never to be believed or heeded by the Trojans.'"

"I am not mad"

"As the destruction rains, the Reaper turns from the viewport, his face a death mask of grief and pain, and I feel as if I hear his heart beat across the years, across the space, and know how far he’s come from the man he wanted to be."