Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2)

by Pierce Brown

“I do love the sunsets of Luna. Like we’re in Homer’s world. Sky a hot shade of fresh-forged bronze.”

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

“We all have our own tides inside. They go in. Out.” He shrugs. “Not really ours to control. The things, people, that orbit us do that, at least more than we’d like to admit.”

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

“Cacatne ursus in silvis?”

“I am the Peerless Legate Gaius au Carthus. I am the sum of humanity. So yield I do not. For a man cannot yield to a dog.” “Then become dirt.” Ragnar pushes the blade home.

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

“The dead can always hear us, my love. Why else do you think we sing? We want them to know that even though they are gone, we can still find joy.”

“Humanity came out of hell, Darrow. Gold did not rise out of chance. We rose out of necessity. Out of chaos, born from a species that devoured its planet instead of investing in the future. Pleasure over all, damn the consequences. The brightest minds enslaved to an economy that demanded toys instead of space exploration or technologies that could revolutionize our race. They created robots, neutering the work ethic of mankind, creating generations of entitled locusts. Countries hoarded their resources, suspicious of one another. There grew to be twenty different factions with nuclear weapons. Twenty—each ruled by greed or zealotry.

The universe does not notice us, Darrow. There is no supreme being waiting to end existence when the last man breathes his final breath. Man will end. That is the fact accepted, but never discussed. And the universe will continue without care.

‘If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will drown. So keep swimming,’