Light Bringer Quotes

"Don’t let Glirastes’s death haunt you, Lysander. Now that you’re in the game, he won’t be the last friend you sacrifice."

"My son is lost. He will come home. But he is not here today. The enemy is. So today, we are not mothers. We are not fathers. We are not brothers or sons. They come to make us slaves again. So today we are not dreamers. We are not Colors. We are swords. We are wrath. We are reapers."

"Go, daughters of Mars, and be our wrath."

"You’re the bookish one. Was it a man who said ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?” A lancer brings her gauntlets. “It must have been—to imagine something so petty as scorn to be the utmost misery a woman could suffer. What, I wonder, would he make of a mother who has seen her husband sold like meat and her babe nailed to a tree?” She dons her gauntlets. “Perhaps: wrath, I am thee? They come for our children, Virginia.” She turns to me and cups my face with one hand. “Do not fear for me. Instead, pity them."

"Praetorians are an uppity breed."

"She killed your parents.” His voice deepens with raw emotion. “I saw it in her eyes. She orphaned you. That is unforgivable. Family does not do that to each other. So, we are family now. You and I. And family sticks together. Come ruin or victory.” He bumps my forehead with his own. “See you in hell, little brother."

"I am Iron. I am Death. I am Gold."

"War requires monstrous deeds! If you cannot be a monster, then get out of the way!"

"amputations on the field are best done without consulting the patient."

"War, the mortal hallelujah.” He makes the sound of a man receiving a foot massage. “Lionheart. I have broken your champion. Now, I come for you."

"We are a pride. We kill together, we work together, we survive together. They came for a hunt, but they forgot: hic sunt leones.”"

"Sefi once told me fruit is never sweeter than after you’ve eaten shit.” He peels a tangerine and eats it before spitting it out. “Not ripe yet.” He considers his braves. “They will mourn later. For now it is enough they know their brothers would smile to see them living. So they smile for their brothers, for they had a good death. Later they will miss them. Later they will mourn."

"The edge of glory cuts both ways."

"Lysander may promise a new age, but he’ll sacrifice a generation to get it."

"Golds are a faithless breed, founded in the gross sobriety of atheism, but the rest of the Colors are willing to believe."

"gifts. Cicero au Votum.” She thrusts forward Cicero on the end of a leash and holds up a rotted head. “And Ajax au Grimmus. The rest of him couldn’t make it."

"I doubt you had Darrow’s full attention. You must wonder what will happen when you do. Will you measure up?"

"Sheathed is my blade, held fast by my word,” he says. “True are my words, secured by my name,” I reply."

"You don’t have me by the throat. You have me by the balls. You can wrench and twist and it will cause me terrible agony. But in the end, they are just balls, and I am a woman, so I will go on, enduring without my balls and I will pester you with death by a billion cuts. Except it won’t be me. I am not a captain who goes down with his ship. I am a Sovereign, who will delegate to people more suited for tunnels and darkness and the horrors that happen there."

"I did have his full attention, Virginia. For a moment. In a dark street. He was tired, wounded but so was I. I broke his sword. Probably his arm. And put my razor through his chest. Then he fled and left his sword behind. It was not cowardice to run, he’d simply been outmaneuvered. Just as you are now."

"Remember, you live for the fallen, for at your word they ran to the grave. Make not their sacrifice be ever in vain."

"I do what I say, always. I think that is important."

"Nothing makes wisdom like true loss,"

"It was Athena who told me there is no home for those born slaves. Only a prison the master tricked you into calling home. The true home for a slave is in dreams. Except on Mars where slaves make dreams real. I always found that a beautiful thought."

"To the engines, the reactor, rapid winds may they devise. To our hearts, to our hands, toward deeds brave and true may they rise. To the Republic, to Mars, for hope and liberty ever may they stride.” He thinks for a moment. “To our Sovereign, a lion Gold but wise as Minerva gray-eyed."