Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.

“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.

An empire cannot be destroyed from without till it is destroyed from within.

“Mankind was always enslaved, they’ll say. Freedom enslaves us to lust, to greed. Take freedom away, and they give me a life of dreaming.

“Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence.”

Words are a weapon stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart.