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Pierce Brown Quotes

Pierce Brown is an American science fiction author who writes the Red Rising series, consisting of Red Rising , Golden Son , Morning Star , Iron Gold and Dark Age . Wikipedia  

✵ 28. January 1988
Pierce Brown photo

Works

Dark Age
Dark Age
Pierce Brown
Morning Star
Morning Star
Pierce Brown
Golden Son
Golden Son
Pierce Brown
Red Rising
Red Rising
Pierce Brown
Iron Gold
Iron Gold
Pierce Brown
Pierce Brown: 33   quotes 0   likes

Famous Pierce Brown Quotes

“"You have everything, Karnus. Wealth. Power. Seven brothers and sisters. How many cousins? Nieces? Nephews? A father and mother who love you, yet… you are here, drinking alone, killing my friends. Setting the purpose of your life to ending me. Why?"
"Because you wronged my family. No one wrongs the Bellona and lives."
"So it's pride."
"It's always pride."
"Pride is just a shout into the wind."
He shakes his head, voice deepening. "I will die. You will die. We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind - how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall." He leans forward. "So you see, pride is the only thing."”

Pierce Brown book Golden Son

Source: Golden Son (2015), Ch. 11: Red; Karnus and Darrow

“Lies are rust on iron. A blemish on power.”

Pierce Brown book Golden Son

Source: Golden Son (2015), Ch. 15: Truth; Aja

“All my people sing of are memories. And so I will remember this death. It will burden me as it does not burden my fellow students - I must not let that change. I must not become like them. I'll remember that every sin, every death, every sacrifice, is for freedom.”

Pierce Brown book Red Rising

Source: Red Rising (2014), Ch. 20: The House Mars

“You are a worm who thought himself a serpent just because you slither. But your power was not real, Pliny. It was all a dream. Time now to wake.”

Pierce Brown book Golden Son

Source: Golden Son (2015), Ch. 35: Teatime; Darrow

“I breathe in the full scent of her. If it ends tomorrow or in eighty years, I could breathe her for the rest of my life. But I want more. I need more. I tilt her slender jaw up with my hand so that she's looking at me. I was going to say something important. Something memorable. But I've forgotten it in her eyes. That gulf that divided us is still there, filled with questions and recrimination and guilt, but that's only part of love, part of being human. Everything is cracked, everything is stained except the fragile moments that hang crystalline in time and make life worth living.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 56: In Time

“"What is pride without honor? What is honor without truth? Honor is not what you say. It is not what you read." Romulus thumps his chest. "Honor is what you do."”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 42: The Poet

Pierce Brown Quotes about life

“Yes. I'm alone.
I would have thought there to be worse fates than this, but now I know there are none. Man is no island. We need those who love us. We need those who hate us. We need others to tether us to life, to give us a reason to live, to feel.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 1: Only the Dark

“I am alone with my sin. This is why they rule. The Peerless Scarred know that dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be outrun. They must be worn if one is to rule. This is their first lesson. Or was it that the weak do not deserve life?”

Pierce Brown book Red Rising

Source: Red Rising (2014), Ch. 20: The House Mars

“They call him father, liberator, warlord, Reaper. But he feels a boy as he falls toward the pale blue planet, his armor red, his army vast, his heart heavy. It is the tenth year of war and the thirty-second of his life.”

Pierce Brown book Iron Gold

Iron Gold (2018)

“Life is meant to be felt. Else why live? Valleys make the mountains.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 23: Queen; Sefi

Pierce Brown Quotes

“Government is never the solution, but it is almost always the problem.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 21: Quicksilver
Context: No. I am not an anarchist, a communist, a fascist, a plutocrat, or even a demokrat, for that matter. My boys, don't believe what they tell you in school. Government is never the solution, but it is almost always the problem. I'm a capitalist. And I believe in effort and progress and the ingenuity of our species. The continuing evolution and advancement of our kind based on fair competition. Fact of the matter is, Gold does not want man to continue to evolve. Since the conquering, they have routinely stifled advancement to maintain their heaven. They've wrapped themselves in myth. Filled their grand oceans with monsters to hunt. Cultivated private Mirkwoods and Olympuses of their very own. They have suits of armor to make them flying gods. And they preserve that ridiculous fairy tale by keeping mankind frozen in time. Curbing invention, curiosity, social mobility. Change threatens that.

Problem

“Tradition is the crown of the tyrant.”

Pierce Brown book Golden Son

Source: Golden Son (2015), Ch. 51: Golden Son

“If pain is the weight of being, love is the purpose.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 65: The Vale

Love , Pain

“These Peerless thump their chests in salute to me. The monsters. They go with the wind, chasing power. But they don't realize power doesn't shift. Power is resolute. It is the mountain, not the wind. To shift so easily is to lose trust. And trust is what has kept me alive. Trust in my friends, and their trust in me.”

Pierce Brown book Golden Son

Source: Golden Son (2015), Ch. 35: Teatime

Mountain

“When I looked up at my father as a boy, I thought being a man was having control. Being the master and commander of your own destiny. How could any boy know that freedom is lost the moment you become a man. Things start to count. To press in. Constricting slowly, inevitably, creating a cage of inconveniences and duties and deadlines and failed plans and lost friends. I'm tired of people doubting. Of people choosing to believe they know what is possible because of what has happened before.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 31: The Pale Queen

People , Boy , Freedom

“"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."
"Isn't that civilization? Order? Denying animal impulses for stability?"”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 41: The Moon Lord

Thinking , Animals , Housing

“"What kind of parent would want their children to have servants?" he asks, disgusted by the idea. "The moment a child thinks it is entitled to anything, they think they deserve everything. Why do you think the Core is such a Babylon? Because it's never been told no.
"Look at the Institute you attended. Sexual slavery, murder, cannibalism of fellow Golds?" He shakes his head. "Barbaric. It's not what the Ancestors intended. But the Coreworlders are so desensitized to violence they've forgotten it's to have a purpose. Violence is a tool. It is meant to shock. To change. Instead, they normalize and celebrate it. And create a culture of exploitation where they are so entitled to sex and power that when they are told no, they pull a sword and do as they like."”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 41: The Moon Lord

Children , Sex , Idea , Thinking

“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 come and I won't even see it.”

Pierce Brown book Golden Son

Source: Golden Son (2015), Ch. 38: The Iron Rain

Death , Men , War , Fear

“Humans are always negotiating. That's what conversation is. Someone has something, knows something. Someone wants something.”

Pierce Brown book Red Rising

Source: Red Rising (2014), Ch. 41: The Jackal

“How can I feel so melancholy for so terrible a past? Maybe it's just the nature of us, ever wishing for things that were and could be rather than things that are and will be.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 39: The Heart

Feeling , Nature , Past

“In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that's left is their utility. War is not monstrous for making corpses of men so much as it is for making machines of them. And woe to those who have no use in war except to feed the machines.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 25: Exodus

Wisdom , Men , War , Joy

“What is pride without honor? What is honor without truth? Honor is not what you say. It is not what you read.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Romulus thumps his chest. "Honor is what you do."
Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 42: The Poet

Truth , Reading

“Is a man a coward if he realizes that bravery is just a myth the old tell the young so they line up for the meatgrinder?”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 10: The Ash Rain; Lysander

“Only humanity could grasp the stars and then let them slip through its fingers for the pettiness in its heart.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 10: The Ash Rain; Lysander

Star , Heart

“I do not feel brave. I am not the center of this symphony. No one even cares if I am here.
Where is the immortal majesty the poets promised me? Where is the stern will my ancestors preached to their children?
It was just an illusion conjured by fools who never left their libraries, or by agents of necessity.
This is the Noble Lie.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 10: The Ash Rain; Lysander

Lie , Children , Feeling , Fools

“I once thought the greatest sin of war was violence. It isn't. The greatest sin is it requires good men to become practical.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 1: Till the Vale; Darrow

War , Men

“A moving mind is always fed. At rest, mine eats itself.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Prologue; Darrow
Dark Age (2019)

“I think, as with all things, honor is best appreciated in moderation. As is cruelty.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 92: Graveyard of Tyrants; Lysander

Thinking

“You know I believe we all begin equal parts light and dark. I fear you think your strength lies in your darkness. But the measure of a man is not the fear he sows in his enemies. It is the hope he gives his friends.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 35: Endure; Virginia, in a recorded message to Darrow

Light , Hope , Thinking , Fear

“The tragedy of the gifted is the belief they are entitled to greatness, Lysander. As a human, you are entitled only to death.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 34: Shadows of War; Octavia

Death

“Don't you find it peculiar? The human conviction that we are the heirs of history instead of paragraphs that are almost over. A survival mechanism, no doubt.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 33: The Devil's Deal; Atalantia

History

“What devious designs freedom requires. One must worry about the strength of a principle when it must compromise itself so often to survive.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 33: The Devil's Deal; Atalantia

Freedom

“Nothing beautiful survives the mob.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 16: Rider of the Storm; Rhone

Beauty

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