Top 50 Dean F. Wilson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Science fiction tells us truths that we mightn’t listen to any other way.”

— Dean F. Wilson

2. “His eyes were like galaxies, and everyone could get lost in them. How many stars flickered there, no one knew, but every time he glanced upon someone, a new star ignited, a new star was caught in the gravity of his stare.”

— Dean F. Wilson

3. “That was the trouble with explaining with words. If you explained with gunpowder, people listened.”

— Dean F. Wilson

4. “Dynamite is loyal to the one who lights the fuse.”

— Dean F. Wilson

5. “His father used to tell him that you can’t eat principles. And no, you couldn’t. But you could live by them.”

— Dean F. Wilson

6. “There are always periodic opportunities to give up, while every single moment is an opportunity to persevere.”

— Dean F. Wilson

7. “She looked at her right hand, where the index finger was cut to a stump. Some said she lost it in an accident, when she was playing soldier with a live grenade. Others said she was taught a lesson by the law, and they took her trigger finger to make her keep on learning. Those were the lessons the Coilhunter liked. Why, he was quite the teacher himself.”

— Dean F. Wilson

8. “We read to escape, to embrace, to challenge, and to understand. Reading enages our intellect, but also our empathy, and we are all the better for it.”

— Dean F. Wilson

9. “They journeyed on for a bit, then set up camp and cooked beans over a small fire. The poor man’s meat. Drifter food. Some said beans’d get you across the desert and back. Dead men said a lot of things.”

— Dean F. Wilson

10. “Fear is leaden. Courage is golden. Let go of the weight of the world, and you will fly.”

— Dean F. Wilson

11. “The silence just allowed the echoes of the question to play out in Nox’s mind, reminding him of his own unwinnable war against the never-ending tide of conmen and criminals. He was trying to clean up these parts, but every time he rubbed away a stain, he found another layer of dirt beneath. So, you could give up – or you could keep on scrubbing.”

— Dean F. Wilson

12. “When in the house of the enemy, the best rooms are always the ones with the lights out.”

— Dean F. Wilson

13. “Some criminals said fighting Nox was like fighting ghosts. He seemed to come from everywhere. Most criminals who fought Nox never said anything at all.”

— Dean F. Wilson

14. “He could feel the Great Iron War coming to an end now, but he no longer had his finger on the button. The curtains of the world were about to close, and the play of life would soon be over. There would be no applause.”

— Dean F. Wilson

15. “The Coilhunter wasn’t much of a talker. He liked to keep things short and sweet, just like the lives of criminals. Well, the short bit anyway.”

— Dean F. Wilson

16. “He had no big plan for this. He had not prepared for the day when he would be fighting his own work. He had not plotted against his own plots.”

— Dean F. Wilson

17. “A new age is approaching, and its advent might make us pray to go back to the days of the trenches. Once the Worldwaker goes off, we will never be able to sleep again.”

— Dean F. Wilson

18. “Nox didn’t say a word. He waited, counting the seconds in his mind. Sometimes you counted bullets and sometimes you counted time. Either one could kill you.”

— Dean F. Wilson

19. “They began their climb, already weary, and the sun tried to steal whatever strength they had left. It was another god, a forgotten god, who gave a daily reminder, and was forgotten again each night.”

— Dean F. Wilson

20. “As the darkness deepened, the sky was streaked with veins of red, the last low beats of a dying sun. Against this scarlet canopy the hulk of the Rust Road’s twin peaks stood tall, mountains of metal, unnaturally jagged. Their sharp pinnacles pierced the sky, and Jacob could not help but wonder if that explained the blood there.”

— Dean F. Wilson

21. “Ben looked at his compatriots, just a quick glance to and fro, but it was enough for Nox to see that they’d made their bets. They were putting it all on red.”

— Dean F. Wilson

22. “The thought had crossed my mind, that in order to save this world from Hell, I might have to become the Devil.”

— Dean F. Wilson

23. “They dived into the ocean of shadow and smog, adding to it with the fumes of their own aircraft. The goggles were useless now, but Jacob kept them on, in case there might be some break in the murky pool. It was fitting that the Worldwaker had passed through there, with the shark emblem painted on brightly. In those deep waters it could not be seen. It almost felt like it had lured them in. The dolphins do not hunt the sharks.”

— Dean F. Wilson

24. “Some men claimed that saying things made them true. Well, many men who said they were rich still died poor. Nox said he was cool, but that sun showed him he was a liar.”

— Dean F. Wilson

25. “Just because his own wings were burnt, it didn’t mean he had to burn others’.”

— Dean F. Wilson

26. “All the while, that seemingly sympathetic sun was growing a little fiercer, smiling a little broader. Sometimes the land didn’t have to get you. You got yourself.”

— Dean F. Wilson

27. “Then everything turned brilliant white for a second, and Jacob’s eyes were stunned. The shock faded, but then another flash came, dulled by the darkness of the fog. Blades of lightning broke through the sea of smoke, accompanied by the violent clap of thunder, as if an angry god saw the storm devour them, and burst out into wild applause.”

— Dean F. Wilson

28. “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

29. “They were shooting far, and their accuracy suffered, but Nox didn’t exactly have a lot of places to dance through the bullets. They came in number, like rain. You couldn’t afford to get wet.”

— Dean F. Wilson

30. “The men followed, or at least their guns did, and they kept on shooting as if their bullets were sand. In the Wild North, they were just as plentiful.”

— Dean F. Wilson

31. “If the Wild North were a living place, as the local tribes often claimed, then these were the embodiment of its dark subconscious. The spirits of men could haunt you, so why would the spirits of machines be any different?”

— Dean F. Wilson

32. “He fell, toppling forward into the sand. He hadn’t even fully realised he’d lost his balance until the ground told him. And the ground didn’t whisper.”

— Dean F. Wilson

33. “If you didn’t have your guns, you still had your mouth. Of course, you had to be careful how you fired that off.”

— Dean F. Wilson

34. “He wondered if they knew fear, and thought that maybe if they didn’t, he could teach them it, like he’d taught manners to the foul-tongued and the red-handed.”

— Dean F. Wilson

35. “Panic pierced the minds of almost everyone present, logic was pummelled into the floor, and human decency was discarded like bait for the frightful fishes that flocked towards the submarine.”

— Dean F. Wilson

36. “If you were picky about who you worked with in the Wild North, you’d be quickly left with no one to choose. You could try to pick the best of them, but you’d have to dig them up first.”

— Dean F. Wilson

37. “Sometimes all the players get a bad hand. You just have to be determined enough to see the game through.”

— Dean F. Wilson

38. “It was as much a battle of wits and words as it was of mitts and swords.”

— Dean F. Wilson

39. “There weren’t many amulet smugglers around these parts. They mostly served Regime territory down south, where the so-called “demons” reigned. If you didn’t want a monster for a child, you’d pay a pretty penny for one of those necklaces. And if you were caught smuggling them, well, you’d pay with your pretty head.”

— Dean F. Wilson

40. “He hadn’t thought of money when death was near. Perhaps that was because Heaven was too expensive, and Hell was free.”

— Dean F. Wilson

41. “In the black abyss, there were creatures that even demons feared. No one knew what they looked like, not even themselves, for they were blind, and though many were scavengers, seizing and consuming any stray bits of food that’d sunk down from the higher levels, there were predators too, just waiting for larger prey.”

— Dean F. Wilson

42. “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

43. “But he who knows not when to obey shall find that he’s really obeying his rebellious lower aspects. His animal nature, if you well. So then, is he really a rebel at all.”

— Dean F. Wilson

44. “In a sea of a thousand mines, the crew of the Lifemaker had to be lucky a thousand times, but in that same sea, the Regime only had to be lucky once.”

— Dean F. Wilson

45. “The desert mocked the map-makers.”

— Dean F. Wilson

46. “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

47. “Let me warn you again, in case your ghost ever tries to condemn me.”

— Dean F. Wilson

48. “And it was to the bottom that the vessel now plunged, into the waters that were blacker than any black on land, into a gloom that was more consuming than the deepest night. Were the crew not focused on their frenzied work to stop the steep descent, they might’ve glanced out one of the many round windows, and they might’ve thought that they were looking into the black iris of an evil creature – and they might’ve been right.”

— Dean F. Wilson

49. “Behind the sternness of his voice there was a shackled anger, and beneath that shackled anger there was a buried pain.”

— Dean F. Wilson

50. “The candles were adored and worshipped like idols, for, after all, they invoked the gods of light.”

— Dean F. Wilson