Top 500 Pierce Brown Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “War is chaos. It always has been. But technology makes it worse. It changes the fear.”

— Pierce Brown

202. “I learn more when I make mistakes, so long as they don’t kill me.”

— Pierce Brown

203. “How sad, the dependability of greed to make men fools.”

— Pierce Brown

204. “Everything she is dwells behind her eyes. She has her father’s mind. Her mother’s face. And a distant, foreboding sort of intelligence that can give you wings or crush you to the earth.”

— Pierce Brown

205. “We all have our own tides inside. They go in. Out.” He shrugs. “Not really ours to control. The things, people, that orbit us do that, at least more than we’d like to admit.”

— Pierce Brown

206. “That gulf that divided us is still there, filled with questions and recriminations and guilt, but that’s only part of love, part of being human. Everything is cracked, everything is stained except the fragile moments that hang crystalline in time and make life worth living.”

— Pierce Brown

207. “There’s nothing worse for a soldier to imagine – that there will be no home to return to once the violence is over, no way to become the men we want to be. Instead, we’re trapped in these violent guises, guises we only ever had the courage to don because of how much we love our home. Is this all we’ll ever be?”

— Pierce Brown

208. “And it beats inside me, this terrible hope, as I know that the end has begun, and I am finally awake. “Break the chains,” I roar. And my people roar back.”

— Pierce Brown

209. “This is war. And victory is the only nobility.”

— Pierce Brown

210. “You’re acting like you share a secret language all of a sudden.” “Isn’t that always the case with those who’ve read the same books?”

— Pierce Brown

211. “You tell anyone I cried, I’ll find a dead fish, put it in a sock, hide it in your room, and let it putrefy.”

— Pierce Brown

212. “Love may give one wings, but everything burns when it flies too close to the sun.”

— Pierce Brown

213. “There are things you know, but when revealed to be known by others can make the world shine in a peculiar way.”

— Pierce Brown

214. “Things are set in stone. Things are well ordered. Reds at the bottom, everyone else standing on our backs. Now you’re looking at me and you’re realizing that we don’t bloodydamn like it down there. Red is rising, Mickey.”

— Pierce Brown

215. “Is a man a coward if he realizes that bravery is just a myth the old tell the young so they line up for the meatgrinder?”

— Pierce Brown

216. “Forget malice or anger. All should beware the wrath of an offended soul.”

— Pierce Brown

217. “But I cannot think only of the Red girl. When I see the moon, I think of the sun: Mustang burns in my thoughts. If Eo smelled of rust and soil, then the Golden girl is fire and autumn leaves.”

— Pierce Brown

218. “Kill or be killed. Cheat or be cheated.”

— Pierce Brown

219. “He extends his left hand. His dislocated fingers look like lightning bolts. I pull them straight. He laughs with the pain, not knowing his brother’s blood is under my fingernails. I’m trying not to hyperventilate.”

— Pierce Brown

220. “A new wound can take a body. Opening an old one can claim a soul.”

— Pierce Brown

221. “The key to learning, to power, to having the final say in everything, is observation. By all means, be a storm inside, but save your movement and wind till you know your purpose.”

— Pierce Brown

222. “But I am no Gold. I am a Red.”

— Pierce Brown

223. “This race – what a beautiful monster. They carry all of humanity’s strengths, except one. Empathy.”

— Pierce Brown

224. “Honor is not what you say. It is not what you read.” Romulus thumps his chest. “Honor is what you do.”

— Pierce Brown

225. “If you punch me back, you will be sent home, Pixie.” I kick him in the shin.”

— Pierce Brown

226. “The moment a child thinks it is entitled to anything, they think they deserve everything. Why.”

— Pierce Brown

227. “But even as I yearn for it, I fear it. Because the more I see of this cruel world, the less I believe it ends in some pleasant fiction.”

— Pierce Brown

228. “My test comes after two months of training my mind with Dancer. I do not memorize. I do not even really learn when with him. Instead, his training is designed to help my mind adapt to paradigm shifts. For instance, if a fish has 3,453 scales on its left side and 3,453 on its right side, which side of the fish has the most scales? The outside. They call it extrapolational thinking. It was how I knew that I should eat the scythe card when I first met Dancer. I am very good at it.”

— Pierce Brown

229. “You make one tribe out of twelve,” I finally say. “By taking slaves.” Just like the Society. Build on the backs of others. It isn’t cruel. It is practical. Fitchner claps mockingly. “Prime, Reaper. Prime. Looks like someone is bucking for Primus.”

— Pierce Brown

230. “Stories are the wealth of humanity!”

— Pierce Brown

231. “One cannot make a mouse a lion.” “He can think like a lion.”

— Pierce Brown

232. “So this kid is what? A predestined Alexander? A Caesar? A Genghis? A Wiggin?”

— Pierce Brown

233. “I can’t hate him any more than I can hate myself. Maybe that isn’t forgiveness, but it’s all I have to give.”

— Pierce Brown

234. “My wife is not as fickle as a flame. She is an ocean. I knew from the first that I cannot own her, cannot tame her, but I am the only storm that moves her depths and stirs her tides. And that is more than enough.”

— Pierce Brown

235. “He has to play my game!” Sevro says. “Shithead isn’t getting out till he plays nice. I’ll give him a riddle instead. What do I have in my pocket?”

— Pierce Brown

236. “He looks like a Miltonian angel falling with wrath and glory. His exoskeleton sheds its friction armor, as Lucifer might have shed the fetters of heaven, feathers of flame peeling off, fluttering behind. Then a missile slashes the sky and high-grade explosives christen him mortal once again.”

— Pierce Brown

237. “You’re the bloodydamn messiah the Reds have been waiting for their entire lives.”

— Pierce Brown

238. “I speak the midLingo. It’s more comfortable than that highLingo fartdust Priam jabbers on in.”

— Pierce Brown

239. “Per aspera ad astra.” “Through the thorns to the stars.” Sevro snickers. “You fancy little fart. Omnis vir lupus.” Everyone a wolf.”

— Pierce Brown

240. “He tells us how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient names.”

— Pierce Brown

241. “I used to think the life strands of my friends frayed around me, because mine was too strong. Now I realize that when we are wound together, we make something unbreakable. Something that lasts long after this life ends. My.”

— Pierce Brown

242. “They are terrible. Terribly rich. Terribly talented. And their chief virtue lies in their ability to sin. They’re prodigies at it.”

— Pierce Brown

243. “I know magic isn’t real. I know it’s all science. But if I don’t know the science, it might as well be magic.”

— Pierce Brown

244. “I now need, as I’ll need at the head of a rebellion, followers, not slaves. Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.”

— Pierce Brown

245. “He’s not really a Goblin. He’s actually very sweet.”

— Pierce Brown

246. “Have we arrived?” “Just.” “Verdict?” “My goodman, do I look like your valet?” “No. She was much fairer. With better bedside manner.” “Adorable, pretending you just had one.” I raise an eyebrow. “You should talk, prince of Mars.” Cassius au Bellona grunts.”

— Pierce Brown

247. “Lorn once told me if he had been my father he would have raised me to be a good man. ‘There’s no peace for great men,’ he said.” I smile at the memory. “I should have asked him who he thinks makes the peace for all those good men.”

— Pierce Brown

248. “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

249. “So this kid is what? A predestined Alexander? A Caesar? A Genghis? A Wiggin?” I ask. “This is slagging nonsense.”

— Pierce Brown

250. “Everyone’s honest till they’re caught in a lie.”

— Pierce Brown