Top 500 Pierce Brown Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Vengeance then,” he sighs. “You said you could give it to me.” “I said I would give you justice. Vengeance is an empty thing, Darrow.”

— Pierce Brown

352. “There’s no honesty in elegance, not in the elegance of humans at least.”

— Pierce Brown

353. “He needed a light. And he made it. Love was his shout into the wind. Same.”

— Pierce Brown

354. “How do you prepare for a kick in the balls?” I say. “You don’t. You suck it up.”

— Pierce Brown

355. “Mother is the spine in me. The iron.”

— Pierce Brown

356. “Daughter, you are my heart,” he replies. “I trust you like I trust the vaulting sky. I look up, and there it is. Different shades, perhaps, but always there. Always true.”

— Pierce Brown

357. “When falls the Rain, be brave. Be brave.”

— Pierce Brown

358. “Yet I’m a Red acting like a Gold. No man is bound to his fate. I can change him. I know I can. But how?”

— Pierce Brown

359. “You’re the same,” I say. “Lonely. You’re all japes and snide comments, just like Sevro, but it’s just a mask.”

— Pierce Brown

360. “He would have been a tall boy, but he could never get enough food to put meat on his bones. His mother died next. The people of Lykos did the Fading Dirge for them – a tragic thumping of fists against chests, fading slowly, slowly, till the fists, like her heart, beat no more and all dispersed. The.”

— Pierce Brown

361. “I hope his pain fades in death. I did not love him till he was dead; and he should be dead, but he is still my brother. So I pray he finds peace in the vale and that I will see him again one day and we’ll embrace as brothers as he forgives me for what I did to him, because I did it for a dream, for our people.”

— Pierce Brown

362. “There will dawn a day when these hostile hours, these days of hatred and violence, seem the faintest of memories, but dark and steep and long is the road up out of hell. So do not tire, do not despair, do not abandon your brethren, and do not forget that through this darkness we and we alone carry the light of freedom. We must defend it with every cell in our bodies. If not now, when? If not us, who?”

— Pierce Brown

363. “It is to remember how few people you know. How many do not know you. How many will soon forget you. How many praise you today to offer contempt tomorrow. Permanence of fame, power, dominion of the individual, are illusions. All that will be measured, all that will last, is your mastery of yourself.”

— Pierce Brown

364. “I take his shoulder and bring him close like he’s a brother. I know the power touch can have.”

— Pierce Brown

365. “A man may run, but none has escaped his fate. Yet.”

— Pierce Brown

366. “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun Nor the furious winter’s rages, Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must As chimney sweepers come to dust.”

— Pierce Brown

367. “She turns to the piano and begins a song, slow, mournful, that sounds like the wind in my dreams. As her fingers drift over the keys, the song wakes something inside me besides grief – a shadow, shadow of a shadow in the library of my mind, something I never knew forgotten.”

— Pierce Brown

368. “Be wary of tyrants: they will help you today and own you tomorrow.”

— Pierce Brown

369. “I want to believe his sense of justice is equal to my love for him, but these are deep waters, and I know friends can lie just as well as enemies.”

— Pierce Brown

370. “They are coming for me. Or am I coming for them? I do not know. I try to feel like the predator, but I cannot. My rage is calming. It is slowing and giving way to fear as the halls stretch on.”

— Pierce Brown

371. “Her world is alien to the horrors I know. All the child sees is love.”

— Pierce Brown

372. “I said I would give you justice. Vengeance is an empty thing, Darrow.”

— Pierce Brown

373. “You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn’t. You say it’s better to die on your feet. I say it’s better to live on our knees.”

— Pierce Brown

374. “The winged girl has become a carrion bird and she doesn’t seem to have noticed. I wonder if she’d smile so broadly if she had to kill all those people with a knife. How easy we make mass murder.”

— Pierce Brown

375. “Fear marks his face. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the pain I willingly bore. Fear when he realizes how different he is from me.”

— Pierce Brown

376. “It is strange. This boy likes me. He insults me, but he likes me.”

— Pierce Brown

377. “It has been years since I’ve ridden a horse, and in all of human history, how many have graced the back of such a terrible prize as this? I fear disgracing this king of horses more than I do the coming violence.”

— Pierce Brown

378. “Titus has failed. And so, as do those of any tyrant after a failed war, his eyes turn inward.”

— Pierce Brown

379. “It takes more to hope than to remember.”

— Pierce Brown

380. “Go on. What about her? Come on, man. You killed my brothers. I killed Fitchner. It’s already awkward.”

— Pierce Brown

381. “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

382. “Dreamers die bad.”

— Pierce Brown

383. “I told myself I would be better than this. I failed that promise. But noble vanity can shine another day. This is war. And victory is the only nobility.”

— Pierce Brown

384. “An Imperator commands each fleet; a Praetor commands squadrons within that fleet.”

— Pierce Brown

385. “So I decide to overshoot his estimation of my insanity and show him how little he really understands the psychology of Reds. Today I lead the Pax on a suicide mission into the heart of his fleet.”

— Pierce Brown

386. “It is my duty as a free man to read so I’m not blind being lead around by my nose.”

— Pierce Brown

387. “Go on.” I sip the coffee. “This is whiskey.”

— Pierce Brown

388. “I howl for my wife, for my father. For Ragnar and Quinn and Pax and Narol. For all the people I’ve lost. For all they would take. I howl because I am a Helldiver of Lykos. I am the Reaper of Mars. And I have paid for access to this bunker with my flesh, all so that I might either die with my friends or see our enemies brought to justice.”

— Pierce Brown

389. “Slaves do not have the bravery of free men. That is why Golds lie to lowReds and make them think they are brave. That is why they lie to Obsidians and make them think it is an honor to serve gods. Easier than the truth. Yet it takes only one truth to bring a kingdom of lies crashing down. Ragnar.”

— Pierce Brown

390. “The tide has risen. And I feel a deep terror in wondering exactly what it will wash away.”

— Pierce Brown

391. “Silly Poet. Haven’t you wondered where Sevro is?”

— Pierce Brown

392. “But the single brain’s control is limited. Imagine each one of the fingers had a brain of its own that interacted with the main brain. The fingers obey, but they function independently. What could the hand do then? What could an army do? I twirl the stick along my fingers in intricate patterns. Exactly.”

— Pierce Brown

393. “I wish I knew that the eyes of his spirit looked upon his Vale. That his ancestors were waiting for him in their cool highland valley. But I know it is not so, because I know the Vale was created and cultivated by the Board of Quality Control in order to provide an important sociological prerequisite for obedience: a carrot at the end of a hard life. That very same belief that made them able to endure untold hardship in the mines has become a militant faith.”

— Pierce Brown

394. “He doesn’t have a knife or a bat. No, he has something I’m far more interested in. A question mark of a sword. A slingBlade for reaping grain.”

— Pierce Brown

395. “Our age is ending. I feel the days shortening. The brief light dimming upon the kingdom of man.”

— Pierce Brown

396. “Fitchner scratches his groin with his razor’s hilt. His manners are worse than mine.”

— Pierce Brown

397. “But you must never let your mind sleep. Your Mind’s Eye must rove without rest. Even as you speak, eat, move, it is not enough for it to collect data, it must digest it as a subfunction, or you will miss something and become a slave to another.”

— Pierce Brown

398. “He was never the brightest, not in the way they wanted. Oh, he was kind and bright with emotions – he could sense sadness or anger a klick away. But empathy is a lowColor thing.”

— Pierce Brown

399. “In a world of killers, it takes more to be kind than to be wicked.”

— Pierce Brown

400. “One must worry about the strength of a principle when it must compromise itself so often to survive.”

— Pierce Brown