Red Rising Saga Quotes

"Soft head, hard bullet. Bad combination, bitch."

"O my mountain hyacinth, what shepherds trod upon you with clumsy, rustic foot? Now you are a broken seal: a scarlet stain upon the earth. Figmentum es Figmentum es Figmentum es FIGMENTUM ES FIGMENTUM ES FIGMENTUM ES Accolades, sister. You have killed Figment. You are Figment. Do not report for duty, a soft female voice says within my head. My wrath be thine."

"Self-pity is the plebeian’s luxury. All that occurs is either endurable or unendurable. If it is endurable, endure it. If it is unendurable, follow your mother."

"We all want to be special. It must ache to discover you are not."

"Apparently Howlers do kneel."

"Tell me: why are cows different from people? Cows have dreams. Cows have affection for their friends and family. If you are going to say it is because cows are less intelligent than people, it is acceptable to slaughter them, why is not acceptable for me to slaughter people who are proportionately less intelligent to me than cows are to them? And if you say it is because people feel more, then I invite you to stab a cow and a human in the throat and see how very similar they are."

"the moment you become Sovereign, you become loneliest person in all the worlds, because there is no new endeavor, no new height to which you can ascend. Whatever loneliness is already inside you is magnified, because if you were lucky enough to have anyone understand you before, they won’t understand you after you sit in the Morning Chair. Only one person alive at a time knows what it means to be Sovereign."

"On the day she took me to see the cows die, I had a thought. I asked Lilath to build me an iron cow. She built me the iron wolf instead, as I knew she would. One day soon, I will melt her inside it."

"Maybe I can one day forgive you for doin’ what needs doin’. But I can’t give you permission to abandon my boy."

"Distance has sanitized war nearly as much as Stoneside’s fucking ramblings. It has made it easy…romantic. I have no interest in sanitization nor romance. I apply scientific methods to produce psychological trauma in our enemies in order to create psychological casualties. To end their willingness to fight and shorten this war. That is my purpose."

"They are meditation totems. Each is for a human who preyed upon my prejudices. Daedra seemed harmless, kind, stupid. She brought my men figs and bread every day for a week, until her figs were laced with a nerve agent. A hundred and four men died because I could not see her for what she was."

"how can you understand a man at war with himself?"

"An idealist. Don’t fret, it’s a temporary condition."

"when I think of that distant look in Atlas’s eyes as I choked him out, that look that reminded me of Cassius when he went to face the Raa, I understand what they both knew—how foolish all this rage is."

"Caesar was a clod. But he got one thing right: war gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please upon the vanquished."

"All of a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils. For order, I impaled soldiers. For liberty, you drowned cities. The victor writes history with the blood of the vanquished. I wonder, in the end, which of us will turn out the hero? Don’t you?"

"Cities and Thrones and Powers Stand in Time’s eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die: But, as new buds put forth To glad new men, Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth, The Cities rise again."

"that is why I make—to see the life that grows around the dead stone I stack. For what is a building without its audience? What is a city without its people?"

"Tigresses don’t need nursemaids. Neither should we."

"My son, you are of the gens Julii. Your ancestors looked to the night sky when there was nothing but drips of light in the darkness. Roads they built to stitch that light together. You are also of the gens Barca, guardians of the human race. You will be hated and you will hate. You will love and be loved. You will fall and you will rise. Never will you know peace, but you will know joy. You may even sail the dark seas in ships and lie beside nymphs in alien woods. You are your father’s son. Forever my boy. Forever our Ulysses."

"You are a clever Homo bellicus, Mr. Horn, as I am an efficient Homo logicus. But do not compare yourself with the best of the Homo aureate. My dominus’s designs are painted on a horizon we will only see in time. My science is logic, his is illogic—humanity."

"Me? A Gorgon? Don’t make me laugh. This dog don’t collar."

"There was one mightier ’fore Allmother’s reign Allfather, King of Stains, was his name. For him, Old Kuthul rose against Sunborn Till in Ladon was he felled, for kin to mourn To the fires his people and the Volk were sent But not all to ash and bone must we lament From sun to dust did the moons and dragons chase The brood of Kuthul, who hid in darkest space, Five ages passed of shadow and ice Entombed in floating caverns, hunted like rabid mice Blossoms of blood and thrones of flesh were grown As brother ate brother; sister ate sister for a savior, Allfather groaned Then came the Outlander to answer his plea Mighty were the Lords of Ink, mightier was He. Whores of their children, shards of their thrones Made He, who crowned Himself with their bones And fashioned Dark Wind of those not destroyed To serve, to anoint, to proclaim: He Who Walks the Void."

"I have lived three lives,” Volsung rumbles through that titanic helmet. “The last is that of Volsung Fá. The second that of Pale Horse, slaveknight to the Warlord of Ash. The first that of Vagnar Hefga, first broodmate to Alia Volarus, the Snowsparrow, Queen of the Valkyrie, broodfather to the god Ragnar Volarus and greedy little Sefi."

"She would have you give up war. She would have you forsake the Wind for roofs. Your stone and bone heritage for the soft silk of heatlanders. She would let their cities suck you dry. She would have you live in their world. I would have them live in ours."