More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Rather a drink be my master than a man. These chains taste sweet.”
“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 look down at my hands. They are what Dancer called them—cut, scarred, burned things. When Eo kissed them, they grew gentle for love. Now that she is gone, they grow hard for hate. I clench them into fists till my knuckles are white as icecaps.
An empire cannot be destroyed from without till it is destroyed from within. Remember that. We’re empire-breakers, not terrorists.”
They didn’t create me. She did.
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? I hate them, but I hear them. Win. Bear the guilt. Reign.
Any fool can stick a blade into another’s belly. The school’s role is to find the leaders of men, not the killers of men. So the point, you silly little children, is not to kill, but to conquer. And how do you conquer in a game where there are eleven enemy tribes?”
“How can you be so cold?” “Little girl,” Antonia sighs, “Gold is a cold metal.”
Gods don’t come down in life to mete out justice. The powerful do it. That’s what they are teaching us, not only the pain in gaining power, but the desperation that comes from not having it, the desperation that comes when you are not a Gold.
Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.
“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.”
The best shall rise. Or is it the best connected?”
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’t need him to tell me the power of words.
