Top 500 Pierce Brown Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “And I order you to get drunk!” I roar to my army. They look at me like I am mad. “Get drunk?” one says. “Yes!” I cut him off before he can say more. “Can you manage that? Act like fools, for once?” “We’ll try,” Milia cries. “Won’t we?”

— Pierce Brown

52. “You and I keep looking for light in the darkness, expecting it to appear. But it already has.” I touch his shoulder. “We’re it, boyo. Broken and cracked and stupid as we are, we’re the light, and we’re spreading.”

— Pierce Brown

53. “I sit back on my heels watching him, falling in love with my son all over again. His mind is more curious than mine. More delighted by the nuances of knowledge. An overwhelming desire to protect him rises up in me.”

— Pierce Brown

54. “That darling boy is so vain he could make a thunderstorm be about him.”

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

56. “Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love.”

— Pierce Brown

57. “Omnis vir lupus.”

— Pierce Brown

58. “But in the kingdom of death, amidst ramparts of bodies and wind all of screams, there is a king, and his name is not Lune. It is Reaper.”

— Pierce Brown

59. “The path is made of many stones that look all the same. When you trod upon evil, do not rest or look down because goodness is only a step away. The next may bring ruin, the next joy, but these stones are not your destination, they are but your journey to the path’s end.”

— Pierce Brown

60. “I will give Eo your love. I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own. Join me there when you die.” He grins. “But I am no builder. So take your time. We will wait.” I nod like I still believe in the Vale. Like I still think it waits for me and for him. “Your people will be free,” I say. “On my life, I promise this. And I will see you soon.”

— Pierce Brown

61. “The Colors, The Iliad, Ulysses, Metamorphosis, the Theban plays, The Draconic Labels, Anabasis, and restricted works like The Count of Monte Cristo, Lord of the Flies, Lady Casterly’s Penance, 1984, and The Great Gatsby. I.”

— Pierce Brown

62. “I’m going to kill you, Aja! I’m going to kill you in your face!”

— Pierce Brown

63. “It is the food that keeps my army content. As the great Corsican once said, “An army marches on its stomach.” Then again, he didn’t fare so well in the winter.”

— Pierce Brown

64. “Maybe that’s just the nature of us, ever wishing for things that were and could be rather than things that are and will be. It takes more to hope than to remember.”

— Pierce Brown

65. “Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair,” he says, turning to glance over his shoulder.”

— Pierce Brown

66. “It is a sword of the first overlord, a razor belonging to the great bastard, hero of the Conquerors, Silenius au Lune. The Lightbringer. “That don’t look so scary,” Dano said when we first got the contract. I smiled and nodded to Volga. “What if she were holding it?” “She’d look scary waving a bloodydamn muffin.” “If I had a muffin, I would eat it,” Volga said.”

— Pierce Brown

67. “You meet a man, you know him. You meet a woman, she knows you.”

— Pierce Brown

68. “Matter, how tiny my share Time, how brief my allotment Fate, how small my roll to play Self, all that can be mastered.”

— Pierce Brown

69. “All men are not created equal,” he declares. Tall, imperious, an eagle of a man. “The weak have deceived you. They would say the meek should inherit the Earth. That the strong should nurture the gentle. This is the Noble Lie of Demokracy. The cancer that poisoned mankind.”

— Pierce Brown

70. “Pride is just a shout into the wind.” He shakes his head, voice deepening. “I will die. You will die. We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind – how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.” He leans forward. “So you see, pride is the only thing.” His eyes leave mine and look across the room. “Pride, and women.”

— Pierce Brown

71. “How cruel a life, that the sight of my dead wife means hope.”

— Pierce Brown

72. “Self-pity is the plebeian’s luxury. All that occurs is either endurable or unendurable. If it is endurable, endure it. If it is unendurable, follow your mother.”

— Pierce Brown

73. “For those who dine with war and empire, the bill always comes at the end.”

— Pierce Brown

74. “Lorn au Arcos. The Rage Knight, the third-greatest man on Mars, who chose to serve the Society by safeguarding the Society’s Compact, instead of reaching for crowns in politics. When he points to me, Fitchner grins.”

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

76. “No god listens. There are only men. And what one does, another may undo. That is my only religion. That of the hand and the lever.”

— Pierce Brown

77. “I know it may be impossible to believe now, when everything is dark and broken, but you will survive this pain, little one. Pain is a memory. You will live and you will struggle and you will find joy. And you will remember your family from this breath to your dying days, because love does not fade. Love is the stars, and its light carries on long after death.”

— Pierce Brown

78. “Inside me, Red meets Gold.”

— Pierce Brown

79. “What an inevitable waste it seems. Death begets death begets death. I.”

— Pierce Brown

80. “Death is easy when you’ve already tried to find it.”

— Pierce Brown

81. “Stay close. Nut to butt, sir. Don’t be shy.”

— Pierce Brown

82. “I was forged in the bowels of this hard world. Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love. He is wrong. None of them will survive.”

— Pierce Brown

83. “But the measure of a man is not the fear he sows in his enemies. It is the hope he gives his friends.”

— Pierce Brown

84. “I’ve never been a man of joy or a man of war, or an island in a storm. Never an absolute like Lorn. That was what I pretended to be. I am and always have been a man who is made complete by those around him. I.”

— Pierce Brown

85. “If a man cannot learn from his mistakes, then what hope is there but to kill us all at first sin?”

— Pierce Brown

86. “Neither time nor space can sever the strands of life between those we love, not really.”

— Pierce Brown

87. “He thinks men like me weak. He thinks me dumb, feeble, subhuman. I was not raised in palaces. I did not ride horses through meadows and eat meals of hummingbird tongues. I was forged in the bowels of this hard world. Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love. He is wrong. None of them will survive.”

— Pierce Brown

88. “All the sadness, all the hurt in the past making this moment all the sweeter. If pain is the weight of being, love is the purpose.”

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

90. “I didn’t mind that it was always about you, Darrow. That was what burned Tactus, but not me. I’m not in love with you like Mustang. I don’t worship you like Sevro or the Howlers. I was a true friend. I was someone who saw your light and your dark and accepted both without judgement, without agenda...”

— Pierce Brown

91. “The man is broke, but he is not allowed to break.”

— Pierce Brown

92. “Time to embrace the suck, babydoll. Unpack the heathen.”

— Pierce Brown

93. “You are a worm who thought himself a serpent just because you slither.”

— Pierce Brown

94. “If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will drown,” he says, and raises his thin eyebrows. “So keep swimming, right?”

— Pierce Brown

95. “Funny thing, watching gods realize they’ve been mortal all along.”

— Pierce Brown

96. “Do not fear for me. Instead, pity them.”

— Pierce Brown

97. “I’m a sheep wearing wolves’ clothing in a pack of wolves.”

— Pierce Brown

98. “In the cold prison of our minds, we are alone with our self-hatred, our doubts, and guilt. No one more than Sevro. A friend may reach through the bars and hold our hand, but they cannot open the door for us. Only the prisoner has the key. All I can do is remind him we’re waiting for him when he gets out.”

— Pierce Brown

99. “Suffering isn’t real to them. War isn’t real. It’s just a three-letter word for other people that they see in the digital newsfeeds. Just a stream of uncomfortable images they skip past. A whole business of weapons and arms and ships and hierarchies they don’t even notice, all to shield these fools from the true agony of what it means to be human.”

— Pierce Brown

100. “Few men truly like seeing beauty burn. But burn it does.”

— Pierce Brown