Pierce Brown

It is strange being in a crowd where no one knows your face or cares for your purpose. In Lykos, I would have been jostled by men I'd grown up with, run across girls I'd chased and wrestled with as a child. Here, other Colors slam into me and offer not even a faint apology. This is a city, and I do not like it. I feel alone.

You will fall to ruin because you believe that exceptions to the rule make new rules.

My chair rolls to a stop. his voice cut short, followed by a thump and sliding sound. My wheelchair rolls forward again. I look back and see Ragnar pushing it innocently along. Sevro isn't in the hallway behind us. I frown, wondering where he went, till he bursts out of a side passage."You! Troll!" Sevro shouts. "I'm a terrorist warlord! Stop throwing me. You made me drop my candy!" Sevro looks at the floor of the hallway. "Wait. Where is it? Dammit, Ragnar. Where is my peanut bar? You know how many people I had to kill to get that? Six! Six!" Ragnar chews quietly above me, and though I'm probably mistaken, I think I see him smile.

Darrow: "Does he really believe believe in magic?" I ask.Daxo Au Telemanus: "He says gnomes steals ear wax from him at night. Mother thinks he's been hit too many times in the head." Daxo backs away following his father. But he can't hide the his clever smile as he pops a jellybean into his mouth. And I see where the ones in my pocket came from. "I say he just lives in a more entertaining world than we do.

Rather a drink be my master than a man.

I still remember the flush of blood in her cheeks as she danced. She was all the raw colours of life, the crude beauty of nature. I am the human concept of beauty. Gold made soft and supple in man's form.

They believe civilization weakens natural selection. They do nature__ work so that we do not become a soft race.

Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.

The Golds dance in pairs,Obsidians in threes, Grays in dozens. We dance alone, because only alone do Helldivers drill.~Uncle Narol

You tell anyone I cried, I'll find a dead fish, put it in a sock, hide it in your room, and let it putrefy.""Fair enough.

And there's the beauty of space. A billion paths to choose.

There is a festival where we wear the faces of demons to ward evil spirits from our dead in the vale. Sometimes wefail.

Like a sheep invited to a banquet in his honor thrown by wolves.

Anyone who writes books is at least mostly an introvert. It__ amazing to be able to share that internalized part of myself, that little world that no one really knows about. I just wrote down it down on a piece of paper just to be crazy, and people loving that is so strange.

Sevro." I lean forward. "Your eyes..."He leans in close. "Do you like 'em?""Bloodydamn. Did you get Carved?""By the best in the business. Do you like 'em?""They're bloodydamn marvelous. Fit you like a glove."He punches his hands together. "Glad you said that. Cuz they're yours."I blanch. "What?""They're yours.""My what?""Your eyes!""My eyes...""Do you want the eyes back?" Sevro asks, suddenly worried. "I can give them back.""No!" I say. "It's just I forgot how crazy you are.""Oh." He laughs and slaps my shoulder. "Good. I thought it might be something serious. So I'm prime keeping them?""Finders keepers," I say with a shrug.

s father's words. But they are as empty on his lips as they feel in my ears. This was has taken everything from him. I see in his eyes how broken he is. how terribly hard he is trying to be his father's son. If he could, he would choose to be back by the campfire we made in the highlands of the Institute. He would return to the days of glory when life was simple, when friends seemed true. But wishing for the past doesn't clean the blood from either of our hands.

Slaves do not have the bravery of free men.

As we pretend to be brave, we become so.