Badassery Quotes
33"I was forged in the bowels of this hard world. Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Red Rising, ch. Prologue, p. 1
"I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Red Rising, ch. Prologue, p. 1
"Ares once told me that it is the hottest fire that forms the sternest steel. Keep pushing the boy."
- Dancer O'Faran
Red Rising, ch. 12: The Carving, p. 91
"If I am a good man, then why do I want to do bad things?"
- Darrow O'Lykos
Red Rising, ch. 13: Bad Things, p. 102
"Well, I do believe I am the lightning,” Cassius declares. “And you, my brooding friend, are the thunder."
- Cassius au Bellona
Red Rising, ch. 31: The Fall of Mustang, p. 239
"I am the spark that will set the worlds afire. I am the hammer that cracks the chains."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Red Rising, ch. 44: Rise, p. 380
"He is as he always told me to be—a stone amid the waves; wet, yet unimpressed by all that swirls about him."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Golden Son, ch. 28: The Stormsons, p. 247
"Mortals who plan die a thousand times. We who obey die but once."
- Ragnar Volarus
Golden Son, ch. 34: Blood Brothers, p. 295
"My son, my daughter, now that you bleed, you shall know no fear, no defeat, only victory. Your cowardice seeps from you. Your rage burns bright. Rise, warrior of Gold, and take with you your Color’s might."
- Unnamed Whites
Golden Son, ch. 36: Lord of War, p. 313
"To my left and right, the falling soldiers look like raging lightning bugs jerked out of some Carver’s fantasy. I admire one to my left, the bronze sun is behind him as he falls, silhouetting him, immortalizing him in that singular moment—one I know I shall never forget—so that he looks like a Miltonian angel falling with wrath and glory. His exoskeleton sheds its friction armor, as Lucifer might have shed the fetters of heaven, feathers of flame peeling off, fluttering behind. Then a missile slashes the sky and high-grade explosives christen him mortal once again."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Golden Son, ch. 38: The Iron Rain, p. 329
"Some men have threads of life so strong that they fray and snap those around them. Enough friends have paid for my war. This one’s on me."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Golden Son, ch. 41: Achilles, p. 362
"This is always how the story would end,” he says to me. “Not with your screams. Not with your rage. But with your silence."
- Adrius au Augustus
Morning Star, ch. Prologue, p. 2
"He wants pity. My pity was lost in the darkness."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Morning Star, ch. 4: Cell 2187, p. 35
"Death chewed on me a bit. Then spat my bloody ass back out. Said there was killing that needed doin’ and some wild blood of mine that needed savin’"
- Narol O'Lykos
Morning Star, ch. 8: Home, p. 56
"I released your Carving to every mine. To every holoSite. To every millimeter of this bloodydamn Society. The Golds thought they could kill you off. That they could beat you and make your death mean nothing. I’ll be damned if I’d let that happen.” He thumps his hand on a table. “Damned if I’d let you disappear facelessly into the machine like my mother. There’s not a Red on Mars that doesn’t know your name, Reap. Not a single person in the digital world who doesn’t know that a Red rose to become a prince of the Golds, to conquer Mars. I made you a myth. And now that you’re back from the dead, you’re not just a martyr. You’re the bloodydamn messiah the Reds have been waiting for their entire lives."
- Sevro au Barca
Morning Star, ch. 10: The War, p. 79
"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."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Morning Star, ch. 23: The Tide, p. 181
"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."
- Roque au Fabii
Morning Star, ch. 42: The Poet, p. 336
"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."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Morning Star, ch. 44: The Lucky Ones, p. 343
"I have seen the heavens, I have seen the hells, and I know now that our future is war,"
- Sefi the Quiet
Morning Star, ch. 54: The Goblin and the Gold, p. 425
"Hell hath no fury like a woman packing a railgun."
- Ephraim ti Horn
Iron Gold, ch. 6: Ephraim, p. 48
"Well, here I am, you deviant bitch. Here I bloody am. The motherfucking consequence."
- Darrow O'Lykos
Dark Age, ch. Prologue, p. 1
"The old rage in colder ways, for they alone decide how to spend the young."