Red Rising Saga Quotes

"Never trust the man who sleeps under siege. He’s either lazy or disloyal."

"What good is being smarter than everyone if no one listens?"

"Sarcastic ripostes are seldom clever enough to prove that they are little more than the desperate cries for validation of a petty and insecure mind."

"Senator Telemanus. I must admit, the architecture certainly makes a statement. It is a remarkable man who can bare his balls to the world."

"I confess. I have always viewed Sevro as a marginal character in our great endeavor. He is ill-tempered, rash, and braggadocious in nature. I don’t know if he’s ever read a book. Let me loose, and I will subdue the illiterate halfman in short order."

"To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering."

"Matter, how tiny my share Time, how brief my allotment Fate, how small my roll to play Self, all that can be mastered"

"Chop ’em if they’re taller. Stomp ’em if they’re smaller. Mauler, brawler, legacy hauler, smoke that crow, earn this holler. Mauler, brawler, legacy hauler, smoke that ant, pay off your collar. Legio! Aeterna! Victrix!"

"Only fascists should make cities. Demokrats never have a salient thesis."

"A man may run, but none has escaped his fate. Yet."

"Ozgard the Mad. Ozgard the Bad. Ozgard the Berryclad."

"Make no mistake, Sefi, Queen of the Obsidians, this is no war of Wind or Fire.” He gestures to the dismantled Obsidian youth around him, with pity to the one holding the bone fragment in his neck. “This is a war of annihilation, and you are outmatched by the darker breed of my kind."

"Life is meant to be felt. Else why live? Valleys make the mountains."

"Practical. Nagal is the superior language to Common. It conveys the soul better and has more beautiful words. Weldschmer. The pain in discovering the world fails to fulfill expectation. Fenwehr. The longing to be somewhere else. But we have no word for practical. Only honorable or shameful."

"This horse rides for only one man."

"All my life, I’ve tamed myself to not frighten others. Sometimes it is fun to let the lion out."

"I’ll never get used to seeing the fear Sevro wakes in people. Deep down they know Darrow is operating on a framework of logic. No one, not even me, believes that Sevro is completely sane."

"Spakr. In Nagal, quiet and wise are the same word. So if I say ‘Mann ni spakr,’ it means that man is not quiet, and thus stupid and loud."

"I’ve spent enough time in the past, love. The dead need no tears. They don’t rest easier for our vengeance, or our guilt.” She shrugs. “They’d want us to live. And life’s about the now and the future, eh?"

"Was my own clan that did me wrong.” His heavy eyes flick up. “Didn’t know that, did ya? They burnt off me what makes a man a man. Ares found me bleeding to death in a tunnel. He knew what they’d done. He fixed me, in more ways than one. But he did one better. He taught me it was Gold that broke us. Taught me Red could matter. Taught me I mattered. Ten years, I never saw his face.” He looks up at Sevro. “When he took that helmet off to you, to me, and I saw Gold, I wept worse than when they gelded me. First man who said I wasn’t broken was the master. The slaver. Hit me good. Right here.” He thumps his chest with a flat hand. “And I saw it hit him. I wasn’t his best. I wasn’t his favorite. But I was the only one who believed like he did. Was me that chose Darrow. Was me that had the keys to Tinos.” He swallows. “Boy…that father of yours never judged me ’cept by what I’d done. Began to understand I owed him the same. Made a choice, then. I’d stand before him. Him that freed me. Him that made me different, made me a force. And I’d tell him what he told me long before: a man is his actions, not his blood.” He looks back at the remains of the datadrop in sorrow that even now he still hides his truth. “The Jackal came before I got that chance. That is the greatest regret of my life. Your pa was my hero then and he is my hero now. I knew I’d never see his like again. I was wrong."

"Permanence of fame, power, dominion of the individual, are illusions. All that will be measured, all that will last, is your mastery of yourself."

"I have thought it over. I think I would be a good father,” Daxo says at last. “After all, I have a fine example to follow."

"Ma’am…” I turn back to her. “It must be said: It is in honor to serve a true Sovereign."

"You were not misunderstood by your father, Atalantia. You were simply disliked. Aja was his pride. Moira was his joy. You were just…there with your silk, and your Venusian orgies. Acting out to get attention. And now you’re his last resort. The pitiable last sentence of a family saga that is almost over."

"that is the noble lie of demokracy, isn’t it? The belief in humanity, even though humanity is a screaming, selfish mob. I love humans, truly. But humanity…” She shivers. “I wanted, I needed to see your face as you realized we were right all along. It is true beauty."