Pierce Brown

I look at him for a moment. Words are a weapon stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart. I come from a people of song and dance. I don__ need him to tell me the power of words. But I smile nonetheless.

There is no peace for great men

In the densest places of man, humanity most easily breaks down

Sometimes I wonder if he were raised a Red and I a Gold if he wouldn't have ended up a better man than I am now, and I a worse man than he ever could be.For some reason I think I could have been capable of great evil.

Life is the most effective school ever created. Once upon a time they made children bow their heads and read books. It would take ages to get anything across." He taps his head. "But we have widgets and datapads now, and we Golds have the lower Colors to do our research. We need not study chemistry or physics. We have computers and others to do that. What we must study is humanity. In order to rule, ours must be the study of political, psychological, and behavioral science - how desperate human beings react to one another, how packs form, how armies function, how things fall apart and why. You could learn this nowhere else but here.

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

The Golds have everything, yet they demand sacrifices even from their own. This place is sick. This empire broken. It eats its kings, its queens, as hungrily as it does the paupers who mill its earth.

Freedom costs too much

Death isn't empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death. I say we break those chains. Break the chains of fear and you break the chains that bind us to the Golds, to the Society. Could you imagine it? Mars could be ours. It could belong to the colonists who slaved here, died here." Her face is easier to see as the night fades through the clear roof. It is alive, on fire. "If you led the others to freedom. The things you could do, Darrow. The things you could make happen." She pauses and I see her eyes are glistening. "It chills me. You have been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low.""You repeat the same damn points," I say bitterly. "You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn't. You say it's better to die on your feet. I say it's better to live on our knees.""You're not even listening!" she snaps. "We are machine men with machine minds, machine lives _" "And machine hearts?" I ask. "That's what I am?""Darrow _" "What do you live for?" I ask her suddenly. "Is it for me? Is it for family and love? Or is it just for some d

War is chaos. It always has been. But technology makes it worse. It changes the fear. At the Institute, I feared men. I feared what Titus and the Jackal could do to me. You see death coming there and can at least struggle against it. Here you don't have such luxury. Modern war is fearing the air, the shadows, fearing the silence. Death will com and I won't even see it. ~Darrow

Love and war. Same coin. Different sides. I'm too wrinkled for either.""Maybe war will breathe some life into your old bones.""Well, I tried love last month." He leans close. "Didn't work like it used to.""Too honest, Lorn." I can't help but laugh.

Treason is a matter of the date, Proctor

You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.

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

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 judgement, without agenda...

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

Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver._ She makes sure I don__ speak.__nderstand that. The only power they have is in death. The harder they die, the loudertheir voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife served her purpose.

I was learning the craft; I didn't study writing in school. Rejection was my motivation, and failure is what taught me.