Roque au Fabii Quotes

"If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will drown,” he says, and raises his thin eyebrows. “So keep swimming, right?"

"And violent hearts set harshest flame"

"Blood begets blood begets blood begets blood …"

"I am a master with metaphor and a rogue with assonance."

"A man is never too young to kill, never too wise, never too strong, but he can damn well be too rich."

"He always thinks because I’m reading, I’m not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted."

"Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark."

"He was always our friend,” Roque says. “It was our responsibility to help him try. Even if it was like hugging a flame."

"She kills our friend. She kills Quinn, but we let her walk away for the grander scheme. Everything costs something, Darrow. Perhaps you’ll soon tire of making your friends pay."

"Better to go into that other world in the full glory of some passion than to fade and wither with age. Live fast. Die young, my wayward friend."

"It seems we are being unfair, hypocritical even,” he observes. “All here know my family is full of politicians. Some of you might even think I come from noble blood and noble seed. But we Fabii are a dishonest breed. Mother’s a Senator who lines her pockets with agricultural funds and lowColor medical subsidies so that she can live in more homes than her mother did. My paternal grandfather poisoned his own nephew over a Violet starlet a quarter his age, who ended up stabbing him and blinding herself when she discovered he killed the nephew, her lover. But that’s nothing next to my great-great-uncle, who fed servants to lampreys because he read Emperor Tiberius pioneered the strange passion. Yet here I am, spawn of all that sin, and I wager no one here questions my loyalty. “Why, then, do we doubt Victra’s? She has remained steadfast to Darrow since the Academy. None of you were there. None of you know anything about it, so I insist you shut your mouths. Even when her mother demanded she abandon Darrow and Augustus, she stayed. Even when the Praetorians came to kill us on Luna, she stayed. Now she is here, when we are little more than a ragtag coalition of bandits, and you question her. You disgust me. It makes me sad to be among you bickerers. So if another man or woman questions her loyalty, I will lose faith in this fellowship. And I will leave."

"Let fall the Rain."

"I didn’t mind that it was always about you, Darrow. That was what burned Tactus, but not me. I’m not in love with you like Mustang. I don’t worship you like Sevro or the Howlers. I was a true friend. I was someone who saw your light and your dark and accepted both without judgment, without agenda. And what did you do to me? You used me like a man uses a horse. I’m better than that. Quinn was better than that."

"For peace, in whatever way we find it.” He turns to me. “Isn’t that why you fight?"

"Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair"

"I think I’m better than you,” he says. I step back, wounded. He watches the deer nibble at the grain in the feeder. “I’ve sat by the bedsides of three friends this year. Quinn, Tactus, and you. Each time I knew I would have gladly switched places with any of you. Would you wish the same?"

"And thus go liars, with a bloodydamn kiss."

"You are a son of Red. I a son of Gold. That world where we are brothers is lost.” But he comes close, bending, reaching with delicate hands to angle the ivory box in my lap toward my face. “And in this world, the power of Gold will never wane."

"When all is lost, honor demands death,” Roque once told me. “It is a noble end."

"Oh, how the vultures flock to the mighty, to eat the carcasses left in their wake."

"You made me a mass murderer against my own people,” Roque says. “My debt to my Sovereign and the Society for my part in the Bellona-Augustus War is not yet paid. Millions lost their lives in the Siege of Mars. Millions who need not have died if I had seen through the ruse and done my duty to my people."

"Darrow is only who he is because of who is around him."

"Brothers, sisters, till the last Woe that this has come to pass, By your grave, I shall weep For it was I who made you sleep."

"Take my hand in kinship for the sake of your people and the sake of Gold. Or I will use it to build an age of peace upon the ashes of your house."

"we are the Sword Armada. We are the iron hand of the Legion and the fury of the Society. Our ships will darken the lights of your worlds. You know what I can do. You do not have a commander to match me. And when your ships burn, the knights of the Core will pour into your cities at the head flying columns and fill the air with ash enough to choke your children."