Light Bringer Quotes

"I’m sorry for it, Lys. I am. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the teacher you deserved. That I poisoned you with neglect. Suffocated you with judgment. I know when you looked at me you just wanted me to be happy. But I couldn’t be happy. I’ve…always had trouble with that. Without distractions…well. If I could do it all again, I wouldn’t try to shape you. I’d try to let you shape me into what you needed. I think we’d both have been better off for it."

"Since I woke up on Europa after being cut to ribbons by those Raa cousins, I’ve thought about what I’d say when I saw you again. I was angry at first. Angry that you wanted this war. That you didn’t obey me, didn’t heed the lessons I’d tried to teach you. I saw that as a betrayal. But now I know I was angry because I was always asking you to be someone you weren’t. Someone you could never be."

"Rhone told me when I was younger to always have a plan to kill everyone you meet, and any deviation in a pattern is a sign of someone preparing a trap."

"No, Lysander. You choose. That’s the point of it all. Isn’t it? You choose. The chair means this much to you? More than the people in your life who love you?"

"if it must be guilt that drags you down, brother, I will be your millstone."

"I must. I am Cassius Bellona, son of Tiberius, son of Julia, brother of Darrow, Morning Knight of the Solar Republic, and my honor remains."

"The greatest fear of my life grips me and I look at Atlas and his bored smile, then back at the bag. What if it is empty? The gun is still in my hand. Odd. I thought I’d cleared the clip. There is one bullet left, in the chamber. I set the gun within reach and I open the pack."

"I am cursed to be the mother of Fear. My boy is so much like me. He feels too much. He is tortured. But he has his duty. And I have mine. That is what my son told me when he visited me in my cell when I was held captive by his pet warlord. It was his last revenge, you see. When we sent him as hostage to Luna, I did not see him off. I couldn’t bear it. The last words I spoke to him were, ‘Do your duty.’"

"Gold has failed its duty, Grandmother. In the Core, and here. When we failed to protect the people even from our own blood, the Daughters of Ares had to for us. How then are they terrorists? On Europa, they saved millions, both by harboring refugees and taking part in the assault on Fá. When defense was needed, they offered it freely and paid with their lives. I have sworn to protect them, to take up their cause as my own. Tonight, when I become Hegemon, I will deal with the matters before us, but I will, in time, pursue the cause of dismantling the hierarchy. I will reform our laws. I will demolish the Krypteia. You’ve said it yourself. The Achilles’ heel of the Core has always been greed, and ours has always been pride. I tire of both, so do the people. Gold has failed. We need order, yes. But not the same order that brought us here."

"I have dedicated my life to the study of social engineering, to the history of humanity, and you tell me that a Red who can’t name five moons of Ilium should have the same say in government? Demokracy gives humanity what it wants, boy. The hierarchy gives humanity what it needs. Structure, and hope to escape our own stupidity."

"Akari asked for Gold to be philosopher kings. Maybe we were that way once. Now we are just dragons guarding our treasure. We may be superior in intelligence, in our life spans, in our capacity for violence, but not in our humanity. We failed, Grandmother, long before Atlas set his warlord on us, long before Rhea. We are medieval. We are grotesque. I love you with all my heart. But you represent a past that fears the future. I will not accept that. So, if it is true that the young cannot teach the old, and the old must always teach the young: kill me, for I will learn no other way."

"It is not yet your time to fade. Shine bright for me, Grandmother. Lend me the light of your wisdom, your cunning, your fame. Atlas claimed your duty is to keep his secret. Atlas is wrong. Your duty is not silence. Your duty is to use your voice."

"I am the dusk now. You are the dawn. I have lived. I have had my say. I will help you have yours."

"If you don’t have the stomach to win, there’s plenty of people who do, and will."

"A man once told me that the burning of Rhea was a mistake only because Octavia assumed the credit. That man was wrong. The burning of Rhea was a mistake only because it targeted the wrong organ—the heart of that rebellion. We have targeted the stomach."

"If I ever see you again, I will kill you,” she says. “So why not kill me now? Too good to punch down?"

"In the end, he chose Darrow. The Republic. They killed him, so let them bury him."

"Enough shadows and dust. Let us go home. I long to feel the sun."

"I pick out two cubes, one with the Red sigil, one with the Gold. The only question I have left to ponder is which, were he in my position, Silenius would use first."

"People have saved my life before, but I think you saved my soul."

"The Garter will take decades to rebuild. Without the croplands of the Core, we’ll starve out here. Maybe not this year. But the one after? Raa knows it. I know it. So you have to win, lads. Martian grain. Martian fruit. Martian cows and pigs. That’s your sentence. Feed us, and don’t break all my ships."

"You saved Cassius’s,” she says. “It wasn’t me that did it. I liked him very much. In another life, I might have loved him. But he didn’t need a woman’s love. He needed a brother’s. The way he talked about you. Well…” Her eyes swim with tears. “Lysander was an obligation. You were an aspiration. He was so afraid on our journey to the Core. So nervous to see you and be rejected. But when he saw you respected him, valued him, he shined like a star. His path led back to you, because you made him feel loved. That is all that matters, Darrow. When he died, he knew he was loved. So when you think of him, when you feel sad, remember that.” She kisses me on the cheek. “If we do not meet again, I will see you in the Vale with Cassius. You know the path."

"Bloodydamn Bellona. The Man Who Killed Fear. Gods we’re gonna hear that song in all the bars when we’re fat and old."