Top 500 Pierce Brown Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Today I feel the silent screams of a civilization that has been stepped on for hundreds of years.”

— Pierce Brown

352. “The Golds dance in pairs, Obsidians in threes, Grays in dozens,” he told me. “We dance alone, because only alone do Helldivers drill. Only alone can a boy become a man.”

— Pierce Brown

353. “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

354. “What did he want?” Sevro asks. “What do all politicians want?” “Prostitutes.”

— Pierce Brown

355. “I put him and Victra in the west wing so we can actually get some sleep. Last time, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking a coyote was caught in the air recycler. I swear, at the pace they’re going they’ll be able to single-handedly populate Pluto in a few years.”

— Pierce Brown

356. “This is the future. It should not be this way for generations. My life is a lie.”

— Pierce Brown

357. “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

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

— Pierce Brown

359. “But you don’t get the wolf by the tongue without reaching through its teeth.”

— Pierce Brown

360. “The waves crash all around the roots of the building. Both were made by man. Perhaps at first in hope, to give our species a new home to live and to love. But in time, I don’t know when, their creation became a vanity of will, and in the shadow of that vanity, man grew lesser for having more. Lesser for mastering the keys of creation, because he mistook himself for god, and cared less for his people, and more that his works endured.”

— Pierce Brown

361. “The Gray soldiers prowl the cities ensuring order, ensuring obedience to the hierarchy. The Whites arbitrate their justice and push their philosophy. Pinks pleasure and serve in highColor homes. Silvers count and manipulate currency and logistics. Yellows study the medicines and sciences. Greens develop technology. Blues navigate the stars. Coppers run the beauracracy. Every Color has a purpose. Every Color props up the Golds.”

— Pierce Brown

362. “And violent hearts set harshest flame,” Roque murmurs from his knee.”

— Pierce Brown

363. “I always thought I would die before the end. I trudged on knowing I was doomed. But my friends have breathed love into me, breathed my faith back into my bones. They’ve made me want to live.”

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

365. “This is the Noble Lie. Every frayed nerve, every quaking cell, screams in horror, urging me to crawl out of the tube, to escape this insanity. 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? My first toy was a wooden sword. Adults think it adorable.”

— Pierce Brown

366. “If violence is the Gold sport, manipulation is their art form.”

— Pierce Brown

367. “Anyone who writes books is at least mostly an introvert. It’s amazing to be able to share that internalized part of myself, that little world that no one really knows about. I just wrote down it down on a piece of paper just to be crazy, and people loving that is so strange.”

— Pierce Brown

368. “He disagrees with the rules, but he follows them. It is possible. I can do the same until I have power enough to change them.”

— Pierce Brown

369. “Forevermore, let justice be done.”

— Pierce Brown

370. “That to wipe my ass, you golden pricklick?”

— Pierce Brown

371. “The key is having a long memory for the sweet, and a short one for the bitter.”

— Pierce Brown

372. “And with a great pull, I rip out the tongue of the Jackal.”

— Pierce Brown

373. “And when all that remains of us is our steel monuments and plastic idols, her winds will whisper, her sands will shift, and she will spin on and on, forgetting about the bold, hairless apes who thought they deserved immortality.”

— Pierce Brown

374. “Sarcastic ripostes are seldom clever enough to prove that they are little more than the desperate cries for validation of a petty and insecure mind.”

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

376. “I try to kill him in my heart before I kill him in the flesh.”

— Pierce Brown

377. “I cannot be afraid. I’ve spent too long being afraid. Too long being diminished by loss. Too long being everything except what I need to be. And whether I am the Reaper, or whether it’s just another mask, it’s one I must wear, not just for them, but for myself.”

— Pierce Brown

378. “They see my slender hands and naked face and believe me weak. Dangerous game, judging a blade by its scabbard.”

— Pierce Brown

379. “Violence is the fool’s way out.”

— Pierce Brown

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

— Pierce Brown

381. “He is the monster they don’t know how to write stories about. You cannot trust him.” The.”

— Pierce Brown

382. “It’s amazing how quiet the world is as the arrows sail, carrying death.”

— Pierce Brown

383. “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

384. “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

385. “Everything grand is made from a series of ugly little moments. Everything worthwhile by hours of self-doubt and days of drudgery.”

— Pierce Brown

386. “Sevro does not want to go without me. He does not understand why Cassius needs his help to mop up the remainders of Diana. I tell him the truth. “Cassius has a pouch in his boot, the one Lilath gave him. I need you to steal it.” His eyes do not judge. Not even now. There are times when I wonder what I did to earn such loyalty, then others when I try not to press my luck by looking the gift horse in the mouth. That.”

— Pierce Brown

387. “You are going to do great things, Darrow.” She never calls me Darrow. “Maybe you don’t have to do them alone?”

— Pierce Brown

388. “Government is never the solution, but it is almost always the problem.”

— Pierce Brown

389. “Mankind was always enslaved, they’ll say. Freedom enslaves us to lust, to greed. Take freedom away, and they give me a life of dreaming. They gave you a life of sacrifice, family, community. And society is stable.”

— Pierce Brown

390. “His eyes are darker and crueler than those of the friend I remember. “This is war, boyo. Murder’s the name of the game. Don’t be sad we’re good at it.”

— Pierce Brown

391. “How sad I didn’t cherish a moment there with my son. All moments are like that sandcastle, it seems. There is no permanent happy future. There is no Vale. It all washes away.”

— Pierce Brown

392. “If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will drown... so keep swimming, right?”

— Pierce Brown

393. “Half the clans are already drunk when we arrive in the Common. In addition to a dancing people, we’re a drunken people. The Tinpots let us alone in that. Hang a man for no real reason and you might get some grumblings from the townships. But force sobriety upon us, and you’ll be picking up the pieces for a bloodydamn month.”

— Pierce Brown

394. “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

395. “This is not who I am, who I want to be. I want to be a father, a husband, a dancer.”

— Pierce Brown

396. “We must save ourselves from ourselves before the inheritance of humanity is ash.”

— Pierce Brown

397. “I knew war was dreadful, but I did not expect to fear it. How can anyone not, when death is just a blind giant with scissors?”

— Pierce Brown

398. “Life fades in the presence of pain.”

— Pierce Brown

399. “Our worlds made us what we are, and all this pain we suffer is to fix the folly of those who came before, who shaped the world in their image and left us the ruin of their feast.”

— Pierce Brown

400. “I let fear drive my hope away. I let war become me, and my men followed.”

— Pierce Brown