Darrow O'Lykos Quotes

"Though space drags us across the floor to its embrace. Though death might come for us. I am home in this weird screaming mass of humanity. And as we pretend to be brave, we become so."

"Molten wounds still glow where the two nuclear bombs detonated. And I wonder, in my last moments, if the planet does not mind that we wound her surface or pillage her bounty, because she knows we silly warm things are not even a breath in her cosmic life. We have grown and spread, and will rage and die. And when all that remains of us is our steel monuments and plastic idols, her winds will whisper, her sands will shift, and she will spin on and on, forgetting about the bold, hairless apes who thought they deserved immortality."

"His moral creed has always been simple: protect your friends, to hell with everyone else."

"I think the shittiest part about getting old is now we’re smart enough to see the cracks in everything."

"Today, I declare your rule to be at its end. Your cities are not your cities. Your vessels are not your vessels. Your planets are not your planets. They were built by us. And they belong to us, the common trust of man. Now we take them back. Never mind the darkness you spread, never mind the night you summon, we will rage against it. We will howl and fight till our last breath, not just in the mines of Mars, but on the shores of Venus, on the dunes of Io’s sulfur seas, in the glacial valleys of Pluto. We will fight in the towers of Ganymede and the ghettos of Luna and the storm-stricken oceans of Europa. And if we fall, others will take our place, because we are the tide. And we are rising."

"Everything she is dwells behind her eyes. She has her father’s mind. Her mother’s face. And a distant, foreboding sort of intelligence that can give you wings or crush you to the earth."

"“Do you know how the Inuit tribes of Earth killed wolves?” I ask. She doesn’t. “Slower and weaker than the wolves, they chiseled knives till they were razor sharp, coated them in blood and stuck them upright in the ice. Then the wolves would come up and lick the blood. And as the wolf licks faster and faster, he’s so ravenous he doesn’t realize until it’s too late that the blood he’s drinking is his own."

"We separate. Stumbling backward. Humorless smiles on our faces—a bizarre kinship as we remember we all speak the same martial language."

"How sad, the dependability of greed to make men fools."

"They call me the Morning Star. That star by which griffin-riders and travelers navigate the wastes in the dark months of winter. The last star that disappears when daylight returns in the spring."

"Damn the world, so long as I have my mangy little guardian angel."

"He crosses his arms like he’s a kid in a fort looking down at the real world and wondering why it can’t be as magical as he is."

"You and I keep looking for light in the darkness, expecting it to appear. But it already has.” I touch his shoulder. “We’re it, boyo. Broken and cracked and stupid as we are, we’re the light, and we’re spreading."

"In his eyes I glimpse the loneliness, the longing for a life that should have been, and the glimmer of the man he wants to be underneath the man he thinks he has to be."

"Sevro might’ve worn the helmet, but you’re the heart here,” I tell him. “You always have been. You’re too humble to see it, but you’re as great a man as Ares himself. And somehow, you’re still good. Unlike that dirty rat bastard.” I pull back and thump his chest. “And I love you. Just so you know."

"Lorn once told me if he had been my father he would have raised me to be a good man. ‘There’s no peace for great men,’ he said.” I smile at the memory. “I should have asked him who he thinks makes the peace for all those good men."

"Ionian men and women are not like humans of Earth or Luna or Mercury or Venus. They are harder, lither, eyes slightly larger to absorb the dimmed light six hundred million kilometers from the sun, skin pale, taller, and able to withstand higher doses of radiation. These people believe themselves most like the Iron Golds who conquered Earth and put man at peace for the first time in her history."

"I’ve heard the Rim is different. They do not kill children here. But everyone likes to pretend that they don’t kill children."

"It’s hard for me to speak to you as if you were not a tyrant,” I say. “You sit here and think you are more civilized than Luna because you obey your creed of honor, because you show restraint.” I gesture to the simple house. “But you’re not more civilized,” I say. “You’re just more disciplined."

"He is a soldier of his people. I’m a soldier of mine. He is not the evil of his story. He’s the hero who unmasked the Reaper. Who smashed the Augustus-Telemanus fleet at the Battle of Deimos the night after my capture. He does not do these things for himself. He lives for something as noble as I. His people. His only sin is in loving them too much, as is his way."

"I told you I have no interest in the Rim. Now I will prove it. There are over three hundred and fifty Sons of Ares cells throughout your territories,” I say. “We are your dock strikes. We are the sanitation sabotage and the reason why Nessus’s streets fill with shit. Even if you hand me over to the Sovereign today, the Sons will bleed you for a thousand years. But I will give you every single Sons of Ares cell in the Rim, I will abandon the lowColors here and take my crusade to the Core, never coming through the asteroid belt as long as I live if you help me kill his bloodydamn fleet."

"When my uncle gave me my slingBlade, he said it would save my life for the price of a limb. Every miner is told that so that he knows from the first day he steps in the mine, the sacrifice is worth it. I make one now for which I may never be forgiven."

"The Sovereign says I am a threat to you. But who has bombed your cities? Who has slain a million of your people? Who kept your children hostage on Luna? Slaughtered your father and daughter on Mars? Who burned an entire moon? Was it me? Was it my people? No. Your greatest enemy is the greed of the Core. The burners of Rhea."

"I pace my bridge like a caged wolf, his meal just beyond the bars. The kindness of me hidden again behind the Reaper’s savage face."

"In mine, in space, in city and sky, we have lived our lives in fear. Fear of death. Fear of pain. Today, fear only that we fail. We cannot. We stand upon the edge of darkness holding the lone torch left to man. That torch will not go out. Not while I draw breath. Not while your hearts beat in your chests. Not while our ships yet have menace in them. Let others dream. Let others sing. We chosen few are the fire of our people.” I beat my chest. “We are not Red, not Blue or Gold or Gray or Obsidian. We are humanity. We are the tide. And today we reclaim the lives that have been stolen from us. We build the future we were promised. Guard your hearts. Guard your friends. Follow me through this evil night, and I promise you morning waits on the other side. Until then, break the chains!"