Darrow O'Lykos Quotes

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Pride is just a shout into the wind."

"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 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."

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

"Per aspera ad astra. (Through the thorns to the stars)"

"Watch how a pitviper strikes, my son.” Father once clutched me by my wrist and made me play this game. “Watch it coil upward and upward till it reaches its crest. Don’t move before then. Don’t strike out with your slingBlade. If you do, then it’ll get you. It’ll kill you. Move just when it’s coming down. Do that with the terror in life. Don’t act till you’re as scared as you’ll get, then …” He snapped his fingers."

"We talk about anything but the things we should. Innocent and quiet, like two moths dancing around the same flame."

"Wise men read books about history, Pliny. Strong men write them."

"He is as he always told me to be—a stone amid the waves; wet, yet unimpressed by all that swirls about him."

"Tactus was always my friend. He just got lost in trying to be the man his family wanted him to be, when all along his friends loved the man he already was."

"I was not thinking about Victra, but about Tactus and wondering how easily he could tell that I kept him at arm’s length. When I showed him love at first and he rejected the violin, I grew embarrassed and hurt. So I pulled back. Better if I had been true to how I felt and stayed the course. His walls would have broken. He never would have left. He could still be here. I’ll not make the same mistake again, least of all to Victra. I reached out to her in the hall, and I will do so in this company."

"Pliny is a leech,” I say. “A liar as much as you’re an honest man.” “And that makes him dangerous. Liars make the best promises."

"He grew up in a Society where love and trust are as scarce as grass in the Helion waste. But he’s always wanted both. He’s like a man planting seeds, watching them grow into trees, only for his neighbors to cut them down. It will be different this time. And if all goes well, I will give him back a grandson."

"You taught me once, Lorn. I’m a better man for it. But now it’s my turn to teach you. Men can change. Sometimes they have to fall. Sometimes they have to leap.” I pat his knee and gain my feet. “Before you die, you’ll realize it was a mistake to kill Tactus, because you never gave him the chance to believe he was a good man."

"Slaves do not have the bravery of free men. That is why Golds lie to lowReds and make them think they are brave. That is why they lie to Obsidians and make them think it is an honor to serve gods. Easier than the truth. Yet it takes only one truth to bring a kingdom of lies crashing down."

"Momentum is everything to a Helldiver, to military endeavors, to life. Keep moving and dare someone to get in your path."

"You are a worm who thought himself a serpent just because you slither."

"These Peerless thump their chests in salute to me. The monsters. They go with the wind, chasing power. But they don’t realize power doesn’t shift. Power is resolute. It is the mountain, not the wind. To shift so easily is to lose trust. And trust is what has kept me alive. Trust in my friends, and their trust in me."

"I hate how my body shivers at the idea of glory. There’s something deep in man that hungers for this. But I think it weakness, not strength, to abandon decency for that strange darker spirit."

"For some reason I think I could have been capable of great evil. Maybe that’s the guilt. Maybe that’s the fear of a life where I never knew Eo. I don’t know. Or maybe it’s the fear of knowing how easily I fall to pride."