Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

“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.

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

She controls the twelve Olympic Knights, legions of Peerless Scarred, and Obsidians as innumerable as the stars. And those Obsidians are only the elite. The Gray soldiers prowl the cities ensuring order, ensuring obedience to the hierarchy. The Whites arbitrate their justice and push their philosophy. Pinks pleasure and serve in highColor homes. Silvers count and manipulate currency and logistics. Yellows study the medicines and sciences. Greens develop technology. Blues navigate the stars. Coppers run the bureaucracy. Every Color has a purpose. Every Color props up the Golds.

“In the densest places of man, humanity most easily breaks down,”

Personally, I do not want to make you a man. Men are so very frail. Men break. Men die. No, I’ve always wished to make a god.”

“And now I Carve the things I saw in my fever dreams, just as they always wished. I dreamed of you, I think. In the end, I suppose they’ll wish I hadn’t dreamed at all.”

They are like specks of silver in an ocean of ink. And I am so much less. But those specks could ravage Mars. They could destroy a moon. Those specks rule the ink.

what did they call them, Presidents?—a tyrant in necessity’s clothing.”

“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.”

“Promises are just chains,” she rasps. “Both meant for breaking.”

I am the spark that will set the worlds afire. I am the hammer that cracks the chains.

Steel is power. Money is power. But of all the things in all the worlds, words are power.”