Morning Star Quotes

"She loves you, you know,” Daxo says. “She’s just afraid of losing you, so she holds you far away.” He smiles to himself. “Funny how we are, isn’t it?"

"I’ve not parted with your gift,” he says. He traces the head of the jackal. “All my life I’ve been given lions. Nothing of my own. What does it say about me that my greatest enemy knows me better than any friend?"

"It’s easy to fool a romantic. To think he was right there when I took his girl. You went running by in the hall screaming Tactus’s name, and he looked up in confusion. I pushed a sliver of Quinn’s skull deeper into her brain with my scalpel. I thought about letting her live with brain damage. But the thought of her drooling everywhere made me sick. You think he still would have loved her if she drooled?"

"Love is for the weak. The only thing you and I have in common is our hunger. You think that I cannot be satisfied. That I always yearn for more. But look in the mirror and you’ll see the same man staring back at you. Tell your little Red friends what you like. But I know you lost yourself among us. You yearned to be Gold. I saw it in your eyes at the Institute. I saw that fever on Luna when I proposed that we should rule. I saw it when you rode that triumphal chariot up to the steps of the citadel. It’s that hunger that makes us forever alone."

"Not even evolved enough to have a Color, Darrow? Just a homo sapiens playing in the realm of gods."

"You were my twin. We were bound for life.” There are tears in her eyes. “I defended you for years. Then I find out that it was you who had Claudius killed.” She blinks through the tears, shaking her head as she finds her resolve. “I cannot forgive that. I cannot. You had love and you lost it, brother. That is your curse."

"Everything is cracked, everything is stained except the fragile moments that hang crystalline in time and make life worth living."

"That is the peril of a solar empire: all the power in all the worlds means nothing if it is in the wrong place."

"If the Sovereign wishes to speak with me, then let her do it herself. Not through a lackey’s mouth. Tell the hag we’re here for war. Not words."

"My knees?” Sevro smiles wickedly. A mad gleam in his eye. “Stupid Gold. You forgot Howler rule number one. Never bow."

"My dear father thought a man’s deeds make him. I rather think it’s his enemies."

"Set aside your little grievances. Today we are Gold. We can bicker when the Rising is ash. Most of you lived the darkness of the caves with me. You watched by my side as this…creature stole what was ours. They will take everything from us. Our homes. Our slaves. Our right to rule. Today we fight to keep what is ours. Today we fight against the dying of our Age."

"who cares about civilian casualties? Does the sea ever run out of salt?"

"If we lose today, a new generation of Gold will rise with vigor unseen since the fall of Earth. They will see the threat to their people and they will breed creatures like Aja and the Jackal by the thousands. They’ll build new Institutes, expand their military, and throttle my people. That is the future that could be. The one Fitchner feared the most. The one I fear is coming as I watch the Jackal move past me into the room."

"The enemy is brave, I’ll give them that"

"Antonia au Severus-Julii, matron of House Julii and Praetor First Class of the Fifth and Sixth Legions, by the power vested in me by the Compact of the Society, I find you guilty of treason and dereliction of duty in a time of war and hereby sentence you to death."

"Fabii made mistakes,” the Sovereign says. “But he was a noble creature and as loyal a servant to his Color. He was even honorable enough to take his own life, to accept that he had failed and to pay justly for it and ensure he would not be interrogated or bartered. His last act in destroying the rebel docks was the act of a hero. An Iron Gold. But you…you scurrilous craven, you fled like a little girl who pissed her Whiteday dress. You abandoned him to save yourself. Now you slander him in front of all. In front of his friend.” She gestures protectively to Cassius. “Your men saw the reptile underneath, that is why they turned on you. Why you lost your ships to your better sister."

"Imagine a world without the arrogance of the young."

"He’s no Gold,” the Jackal explains. “He doesn’t deserve a razor or a state death. He’ll go like his uncle. In any matter, I very much would like to begin the transition as the hand of justice. Plus, offing Darrow with Sevro’s gun is…more poetic, don’t you think, Octavia?"

"We…we are the Society. We are Gold, Silver, Copper, Blue, White, Orange, Green, Violet, Yellow, Gray, Brown, Pink, Obsidian, and Red. The bonds that bind us together are stronger than the forces that pull us apart. For seven hundred years, Gold has shepherded humanity, brought light where there was dark, plenty where there was famine. Today we bring peace where there is war. But to have peace, we must destroy outright this murderer who has brought war to each and every one of our homes."

"My heart was my brother. And I no longer believe in a world that says he was too weak to deserve life. He would have believed in this. In the hope for something new.” Cassius looks over at me. “For Julian, I can believe that too."

"I remember the feeling of being under the ground, Darrow,” he says slowly. “The cold stone under my hands. My Pluto housemembers around me, hunched in the darkness. The steam on their breaths, looking to me. I remember how afraid I was of failing. Of how long I had prepared, how little my father thought of me. All my life weighed in those few moments. All of it slipping away. We’d run from our castle, fleeing Vulcan. They came so fast. They were going to enslave us. The last of our housemembers were still running through the tunnel by the time I rigged the mines to blow, but so were Vulcan. I could hear my father’s voice. Hear him telling me how he was not surprised I failed so quickly. It was a week before we killed a girl and ate her legs to survive. She begged us not to. Begged us to choose someone else. But I learned then in that moment if no one sacrifices, then no one survives."

"I never wanted to nuke Mars,” the Jackal says. “I was born on Mars. It is my birthright, the prize from which all things flow. Her helium is the blood of the empire. But this moon, this skeleton orb is, like Octavia, a treacherous old crone sucking at the marrow of the Society, crowing about what was instead of what can be. And Octavia let me ransom it. Just as you will, because you are weak and you did not learn what you should have at the Institute. To win, you must sacrifice."

"She is no traitor,” Lysander says, handing her the scepter. The blood of his grandmother staining his hands. “She is our conqueror."

"The boy is under my protection,"