Red Rising Saga Quotes

"Darrow, Lancer of House Augustus. Rise, there are duties for you to fill. Rise, there are honors for you to take. Rise for glory, for power, for conquest and dominion over lesser men. Rise, my son. Rise."

"They say a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. They made no mention of the heart."

"Hic sunt leones. “Here be lions.”"

"I shout at the Grays to get in the pod. Only one stays behind now, face drawn and quiet, as the sergeant and a corporal pull themselves into the escape pod. They strap in across from me. I activate the launch function and salute the Gray who stays behind. He salutes back, proud and loyal despite the quiet in him as he faces his last moment of life, eyes distant and thinking of some young love, some path not taken, perhaps wondering why he was not born Gold."

"Mother bid me to tell you: a pauper can never be a prince."

"In the words of Lorn au Arcos, if you must only wound the man, you better kill his pride."

"Rise so high, in mud you lie."

"A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots."

"A man is never too young to kill, never too wise, never too strong, but he can damn well be too rich."

"How cruel a life, that the sight of my dead wife means hope."

"Then let us rise together. I the scepter, you the sword."

"Vox clamantis in deserto. (voice of one crying in the wilderness)"

"We’re all just wounded souls stumbling about in the dark, desperately trying to stitch ourselves together, hoping to fill the holes they ripped in us."

"The first day I served a Gold was the greatest pleasure I felt in all my life. I can’t explain it to you. It was like meeting God. Now I know that it wasn’t pleasure I felt. It was the absence of pain."

"That is how they train Pinks to live a life of slavery, Darrow. They raise us in the Gardens with implants in our bodies that fill our lives with pain. They call the device Cupid’s Kiss—the burn along the spine, the ache in the head. It never stops. Not even when you close your eyes. Not when you cry. It only stops when you obey. They take the Kiss away eventually. When we’re twelve. But … you can’t know what it’s like, the fear that it’ll come back, Darrow."

"My husband just sat there and watched them die. In the end, the same thing took him. He was a good man. But good men die. To free them, to protect them, we must be savages. So give me evil. Give me darkness. Make me the bloodydamn devil if we can bring even the faintest ray of light."

"He always thinks because I’m reading, I’m not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted."

"Roque, despite his Color and all the things that make him different, slowly slides a marker into the book and sets it on the nightstand beside the four-poster, taking his time and allowing an answer to evolve between us. Movements thoughtful and organic, like Dancer’s were before he died. There’s a stillness in him, vast and majestic, the same stillness I remember in my father."

"Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark."

"In a world of killers, it takes more to be kind than to be wicked. But men like you and me, we’re just passing time before death reaches down for us."

"I will die. You will die. We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind—how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.” He leans forward. “So you see, pride is the only thing.” His eyes leave mine and look across the room. “Pride, and women."

"Pride is just a shout into the wind."

"I have seen the cracks in their Society, and I know what I must do. I know what the Golds most fear. And it has nothing to do with Reds rising. It has nothing to do with bombs or plots or revolution. What terrifies the Golds is simple, cruel, and as old as mankind itself. Civil war."

"Then today, res, non verba.” Actions, not words."

"and with the sound of a frozen tree branch cracking in winter, I claim the sword arm of Cassius au Bellona."