Hopebreaker Quotes

“When in the house of the enemy, the best rooms are always the ones with the lights out.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“The desert mocked the map-makers.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Terror had them all for a moment, and it ravaged them, and when it was finished, shock had its way with them, and left them cold and helpless.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“The walls were painted red, and there was the painter up ahead, that candle-maned woman carving her way through the darkness, and carving her way through everyone she thought the darkness owned.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“It was hard to conceive of one so young roped into the war, but that was war for you. Jacob was just shy of twice his age and had avoided the rope so far. He thought that was a good thing. You see, the rope'd hang you.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Behind the sternness of his voice there was a shackled anger, and beneath that shackled anger there was a buried pain.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Monster was such a subjective word. It was what they called the demons that made up the Regime. Perhaps it was what the demons called them. Yet they all looked alike, so perhaps neither of them were monsters—or perhaps both sides were.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Moments passed like the lives of the dead. Who knew how many had died in that explosion? The Order wouldn't stay long enough to count. Names would be ticked off from a list later, and their passing wouldn't seem quite so bad on the page. Yet as people fell, the counters rose, and the anger rose in those who remained.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“They continued across the seemingly endless sands, watering every grain with their sweat, anointing every granule with their strain. In the hourglass of time the sands continued to shift, and they couldn't find their way outside the glass. Their shadows struggled with them, hauling and heaving, dropping with them, and clambering up with them, and reminding them constantly that otherwise they were alone.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“The miserly night brought very little sleep, and no solutions. It shared nothing with them, keeping every crumb of light to itself.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Silence fell with night, but Jacob couldn't entirely silence his racing mind, nor speed it up to the finish line.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“In such a fight, he thought he might be able to feel the demon in the man become more apparent, but his struggle seemed altogether human. To win this battle, Jacob thought he might have to instead find the demon in himself.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“In Altadas, chance was a loaded die—and just as often a loaded gun.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“They continued this deadly dance across the battlefield, played to the music of gunfire, which rattled them as much as it rattled the hulls of almost every landship in sight, and almost every one they couldn't turn quickly enough to see. Then the music took a bullet of its own, for Jacob no longer heard the song of Andil’s gun.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Jacob couldn't really hear the sound of the other landships over the humming and cranking of his own. He heard the whistle of steam coming from the pipes and the latching of the iron tracks as they clicked into place. He heard gears adjusting, the rhythm of the pumps, the revving of the engine, and the fuming of the furnace. He also heard Andil’s heavy breathing, and he heard his own heart’s heavy beating.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Her words were like knives to his conscience, and as much as avarice dulled their blades, her tongue sharpened them.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“The glare filled the cockpit like a passenger, until every piece of metal, every crag and cog, was illuminated, until the very metal itself glared back, and might've blinded the eyes of the sun.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Rommond placed his gun upon the table like a writer places an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. There was a hint of finality about the gesture, like an announcement that this was the end of the debate. Taberah must've recognised it, for she didn't sustain her verbal assault. She turned and left, and if silence was her shield, it was also her weapon, leaving a sting behind in the quiet air.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“There are two types of discipline. Discipline that destroys and discipline that preserves. The Regime is the former. It disciplines through fear and control, through pain and punishment. To it, discipline is not about self-control, but controlling others. The Resistance is the latter. We employ discipline to ensure that our goals, the preservation of our nation, and of the human race, are achieved, with swiftness and success.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“If the Regime had a factory producing Hope, the Resistance had a factory producing the tools of despair.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“From this vantage point, Jacob noticed the distinctive emblem of the Resistance on a patch sewn onto the right shoulder of Rommond’s uniform. It showed a white equilateral triangle with two lines horizontally through it, all upon a royal blue field. What it meant was the subject of some discussion, but some thought it represented an uprising that pierced the ceiling of Hell and the floor of Heaven, as if to say they would resist not only the Devil, but God too.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Spotlights appeared by the dozen, like the bullets of heaven’s gun, and anyone caught running through one of them didn't run for long.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Further still, there were numerous machines on wheels and tracks and treads, pushed and powered by steam, creaking and heaving as they moved, dripping oil, the blood of industrial war.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“For now, the world of Altadas was mostly an empty desert, but in the future it might be a world of iron.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“The Hope factory was menacing in the distance, for it was one of the few buildings that somehow managed to present itself through the smog. Its hulking form consumed almost all of the horizon, and its many pistons, pillars, chimneys and flumes ate into the heavens. For the parts of the sky it could not reach, those towers sent up endless streams of smoke, and this smoke devoured the natural clouds and left an unnatural haze in the heavens. The factory was a greedy mass of brick, a ravenous form of iron. As much as it gobbled up all the landscape, it threatened that it might eat the onlookers too.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“Solitude was the friend of the smuggler, and was undoubtedly on good terms with the scout as well.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“I hoarded real gold when that was worth anything. If the currency had changed to sugar cubes, I might've opened a candy shop.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“The Pure. It was all a fairy tale, something to give people hope. Real hope. Without it, they mightn't have held out for so long. They might've stopped fighting altogether. Yeah, just a fairy tale. There were no such things as angels, but the demons were very real.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“If the demons had made this world their Hell, then let them have it. All you could do was try to not get burned.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker

“As much as he was thankful for the rescue, his pride kind of wished he wasn't. It'd taken twice the beating the Regime guards'd given him, and pride never took a beating well.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Hopebreaker