Red Rising Saga Quotes

"Sovereign.” She spits the word. “All my life I’ve served. Octavia, then Magnus, then Atalantia. Everyone sits on that stool and tells me I did it with such honor. And every time I hear it, I want to tear their tongues out."

"‘Get them while they’re young,’ she told Magnus once. ‘Get them while they’re young, then you’ve got them forever.’ Honor, duty: it’s all a lie. By the time you know better, you’re too dirty to get out. Octavia poisoned me. She made me fear to be alone so much that I believed only the darkness would want me.” Her hand trembles upward to touch my face. “Somehow she didn’t poison you."

"She…saw what Octavia was. How her grip was squeezing tighter and tighter till it would choke our world. She thought the burning of Rhea was an abomination. And she saw how slowly her mother was trying to corrupt you. So with Romulus’s father, Revus, and Nero au Augustus, she planned a coup. Lysander, it wasn’t Outriders or terrorists who killed your mother. It was Octavia who gave the order."

"She would burn the worlds so long as the ashes kneel."

"Do your duty! Do your duty or the worlds will burn."

"There is evil in us, as there is good. But we do not regret our good as we do our evil. So we know what we are, my daughter. We know what we are."

"If we cannot engineer salvation for our men, then vengeance will suffice,"

"I think, as with all things, honor is best appreciated in moderation. As is cruelty."

"The anger that once made planets tremble is now toothless. Shorn of my myth by my failure, shorn of my army by my mistakes, shorn of my friends and family by the demands I made on them, I know hate will not return what I have lost or repair what I have broken. The sun has raged for 4.6 billion years. I have raged for sixteen. No surprise, the sun has more fuel to spare."

"Not for the first time, I try to seek refuge in anger. I want a fight. I need a fight. It’s how I’m made—to struggle in eternal vain."

"My heart is buried with my army in those sands. But my body trudges on, as it does, no matter the ruin it leaves in its wake."

"The path is made of many stones that look all the same. When you trod upon evil, do not rest or look down because goodness is only a step away. The next may bring ruin, the next joy, but these stones are not your destination, they are but your journey to the path’s end."

"I’ve always felt Pinks to be the most oppressed of the Colors, their plight imbuing some of them with preternatural internal strength."

"If you don’t use a machine, it breaks down. Like the Sons of Ares when we phased them in to the Republic military, like this base. But if something is used too much, it breaks apart, like Orion on Mercury. Like Sevro after Venus. Leadership is a tightrope, especially when you’re losing."

"Pack? Two is not a pack, goodman. Two is debris circling a drain."

"Inside me there is a coward who fears discomfort. That coward will offer solace in the form of excuses. But it is the coward who grooms a man for his defeats. The coward who makes him accept them because he is accustomed to finding a good reason to quit. The coward inside can only be killed one way."

"To those who wrote that we might read, to those who fell so we might walk, to those who came before so we might come after, gratitude."

"The first understanding: The path to the Vale is inscrutable, eternal, and perfect. It cannot be seen with the eyes, nor felt underfoot. It winds as it wills. It ends where it must. It climbs when it does. It falls when it should.” I flow into the autumn strikes, bending back and lashing forward in attack. “It stretches deep into the rocks we dig, and back into our hearts. It winds on before and after us, in all directions and none. Though we may walk it, we may never master it. Though we may see the path, we can never know the truth. The path to the Vale is inscrutable, eternal, and perfect. It must be followed at all cost.” Six more understandings follow the first as I pass through the seasons of the Willow Way to fluctuations in gravity. Over the course of the hour, the narration loops a dozen times, playing on when I lay heaving on my back. “The fourth understanding: The supreme good is the wind of the deepmines. It flows through rock, around people, and over all lands. The wind is oblivious to obstacles though they shape her path. When you smell rust on her breeze, or hear the echo of tools in the dark, smile and be glad. The path is upon you, and you are upon it. All you must do is walk."

"Has Mars fallen? Has Mars fallen?” He sneers. “Where is your faith, Martian? Mars stands. As will she always."

"Aurae is a rare Pink. Not a cheap thrill with angel wings or horns or a silky tail waiting for a client in a Pearl club. Nor a Helen of Troy either—the type of flashing thoroughbred as might be seen on the arm of Atalantia or Apollonius. Aurae is a Raa hetaera. A beauty of shadow and dust with autumnal tragedy written in her features. Her face is long. Her skin is a shade darker than olive. Her thick hair is wavy and blue-black and never seems to be the same color or in the same braid twice. It is impossible to guess her age. Some have guessed forty, some thirty, some twenty. It’s her eyes that make that last one impossible. They are wide set, dark pink, and ancient."

"Until then, my noble foe, per aspera ad astra."

"After being cut to ribbons by Raa Dustwalkers, breaking my word to Diomedes au Raa, racing across half the system to plunge through the Ash Armada into a warzone to save Darrow, then back through the Ash Armada again—under the guns of the Annihilo, the Annihilo—I ally with the Minotaur, a grandiose ruffian overcompensating for his poor heritage whom I haven’t seen since he was quoting Milton high on lexamine and blowfish poison in a Martian brothel fourteen years ago?” He bats the air like a cat. “Please. If you’re desperate to insult me, at least do me the dignity of being lucid."

"Arcos,” Colloway says coolly. It’s the first time since he arrived that I’ve seen him look at me with any degree of sympathy. “He was Darrow’s archLancer, Bellona. He was an arrogant shit, but the best soldier I’ve ever served with. Full stop. He offered Lysander blades. Lysander declined. Took his head off at range. His own cousin’s."

"My gifts belong to the Republic."

"I…don’t think you quite understand where Darrow is going, or how he goes places, or what he does when he gets there. I’ve been on the other side of the equation…how do I say it? It’s utter carnage.”"