Defiance Quotes

“I will be a ruin to consume.”
― Ryan La Sala, The Honeys

“Get down on your knees,' Cardan says, looking insufferably pleased with himself. His fury has transmuted in to gloating. 'Beg. Make it pretty. Flowery. Worthy of me.'
...
'Beg? I echo.

For a moment, he looks surprised, but that's quickly replaced by even greater malice. 'You defied me. More than once. Your only hope is to throw yourself on my mercy in front of everyone. Do it, or I will keep hurting you until there is nothing left to hurt.'
...
There is no shame in surrender. As Taryn said, they're just words. I don't have to mean them. I can lie.

I start to lower myself to the ground. This will be over quickly, every word will taste like bile, and then it will be over.

When I open my mouth, though, nothing comes out.

I can't do it.

Instead I shake my head at the thrill running through me at the sheer lunacy of what I'm about to do. It's the thrill of leaping without being able to see the ground below you, right before you realise that's called falling. 'You think because you can humiliate me, you can control me?' I say, looking him in those black eyes. 'Well, I think you're an idiot. Since we started being tutored together, you've gone out of your way to make me feel like I'm less than you. And to coddle your ego, I have made myself less. I have made myself small, I have kept my head down. But it wasn't enough to make you leave Taryn and me alone, so I'm not going to do that anymore.

'I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this'- I throw his own words back at him- 'this is the least of what I can do.'

Cardan looks at me as though he's never seen me before. He looks at me as though no one has ever spoken to him like this. Maybe no one has.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Don’t count your courage in a pile of bodies, Zuriel. It’s lonely on that hill of broken bones. Reach out, no matter how your hands tremble. Tell your story, even as your voice shakes with every word. That is true bravery.”
― Lily Rooke, We Become Shadows

“An explosion groans to the west of them, and Arrow involuntarily looks in the direction of the sound.
Nermin, who hasn't looked, smiles. 'I think they're trying to send us a message.'
'What is the message?' she asks as another shell lands in the same area.
Nermin shrugs. 'I don't know. I'm making a special effort not to listen.”
― Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo

“What would become of me?"
Those shoulders - the ones she drew so many times, the ones she conjured into being - give only a dismissive shrug.
"You will be nothing, my dear," he says simply. "But it is a kinder nothing than this. Surrender, and I will set you free."
If some part of her wavered, if some small part wanted to give in, it did not last beyond a moment. There is a defiance in being a dreamer.
"I decline," she growls.
The shadow scowls, those green eyes darkening like cloth soaked wet.
HIs hands fall away.
"You will give in," he says. "Soon enough."
He does not step back, does not turn to go. He is simply gone. Swallowed by the dark.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Sprout looked through the wide-open door,
focusing on the world outside. It had been a while
since she’d had an appetite. She had no desire to
lay another egg. Her heart emptied of feeling
every time the farmer’s wife took her eggs. The
pride she felt when she laid one was replaced by
sadness. She was exhausted after a full year of
this. She couldn’t so much as touch her own eggs,
not even with the tip of her foot. And she didn’t
know what happened to them after the farmer’s
wife carried them in her basket out of the coop.”
― Sun-mi Hwang, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

“Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate, people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre, which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone. (...) Quite often if Richard had not been there reading the Times, so that she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive, send roaring up that immeasurable delight, rubbing stick to stick, one thing with another, she must have perished. (...) She felt somehow very like him - the young man who had killed himself. She left glad that he had done it; thrown it away while they went on living.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“… acts of defiance are their own reward.”
― Andrew Wheeler, Sins of the Black Flamingo #1

“This was starting to be fun--strange and wealthy men barking instructions at me, and me ignoring those instructions. Not a bad hobby.”
― Sara Gran, The Book of the Most Precious Substance

“I cannot help observing that beneath his defiance is fear. I know what it is to say the clever thing because you don't want anyone to know how scared you are. It doesn't make me like him any better, but for the first time he seems real. Not good, but real.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“I would be Medusa, if it came to it, I resolved.”
― Jennifer Saint, Ariadne

“let me tell you something, little girl.
the line is gray.
you can like lipstick
and worms.”
― Jenny Noble Anderson

“Did it work?”
“Did what work?”
“Defiance. Was that enough?”
“That wasn’t the point.”
“What was?”
“Believing that your actions mattered, and believing that a good end would come of them, even if you didn’t live to see the results.”
Has snorted. “Cheery thought. Throw dirt in your enemy’s face, get crushed underfoot.”
Saw stopped what he was doing and walked over to him. “Look at it this way, Has. If we can persuade enough people to start throwing dirt…”
Realizing that he was supposed to finish the thought, Has considered it, then said: “Eventually we bury them.”
― James Luceno, Catalyst

“Costumed and painted
We are life laughing at death
life beating its broad wings”
― Tamara Rendell, Mystical Tides

“I was just thinking, your face looks like a bag of smashed crabs and your teeth look like a fighting patrol: cammed up, unevenly spaced and acting aggressively.”
― Wolfric Styler, Troubled Zen

“If truth be told, ‘hate speech’ far more often embodies the nature of the response to an opinion that someone finds undesirable, rather than describing the actual expression of that opinion. And truth be told, it all happened because the truth was told.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“To be in the dirt, helpless against the forces of evil, and still carry a torch within you…that was a capacity for courage which he desperately wished for. What was it that could have a person on the brink of the most terrible moment of their life, but they still stood, unwavering in the face of such evil?”
― Victoria Lynn

“Ötszáz, bizony, dalolva ment
Lángsírba velszi bárd:
De egy se birta mondani
Hogy: éljen Eduárd.”
― János Arany, Balladák

“Art was his defiance.”
― Nick Oliveri, The Conjurer

“Pinetree dreams of a glorious, non-violent revolution. Between the dreams he is proficient in the practical. He is certain that he has enough money, which means he always has more than he needs. He is certain that he has a place to live, which means he always has several places to live. He stays in solitude a lot to keep his dreams of the glorious, non-violent revolution alive and he wishes Lilac and the others would stay with him and his dreams. To make his dreams real he lives quietly through his reactionary emotions. He experiences desires to control his environment and he experiences jealousy when his pleasures are threatened and he experiences possessiveness of property. He accepts these emotions much as he accepts depression and the men's brutality. They have to be acknowledged and gotten through. To make his dreams real he celebrates his revolutionary emotions. He experiences joy in sharing and he experiences completeness in loving and he experiences satisfaction in work for others done with compassion. These emotions he writes about on papers stuck to walls and tells strangers about on boats. These he will not forget. If he can live as if the glorious, non-violent revolution has happened long enough, he will awake one day to find that it has happened. Sometimes he is confused about the meaning of what he feels. Then he is depressed and afraid and longs for his friends Lilac and Loose Tomato and Moonbeam to sit with him.”
― Larry Mitchell

“I do not doubt your visions. But what do they change? Shall we stare up at the shadows and let our blades fall from our hands? Know this, son of Magnus. There is more under the arch of heaven than victory or defeat. We may fall back but not forever. We may feint and we may weave, but not forever. We may yet be doomed to lose all that we cherish, but we shall do so in the knowledge that we could have turned away, and did not. We remained true. They can never have this, not if they burn all we built and scorn us through the dancing flames. You hear me? We remained true.”
― Chris Wraight, The Path of Heaven

“I am not afraid. Should I die, I will go before the Great Shepherd of Lhazar, break his crook across my knee, and say to him, "Why did you make your people lambs, when the world is full of wolves?" Then I will spit into his eye.”
― George R.R. Martin, The Winds of Winter

“

“I don't want comfort.
I want God,
I want poetry,
I want real danger,
I want freedom,
I want goodness.
I want sin.”

”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“

I don't want comfort.
I want God,
I want poetry,
I want real danger,
I want freedom,
I want goodness.
I want sin.

”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

“Individually, a single person cannot stop government tyranny, but an individual can be the start of a movement of defiance and disobedience, which progresses Tyranny through Revolution. We can evolve past the need for government, the need to be controlled, and an endless cycle of tyranny that has lasted thousands of years. But to get to this point, defiance in the face of tyranny is a must which would be the catalyst to end Tyranny and progress us to the beginning of Revolution.”
― Jeffrey Hann, COVID-19 – Short Path to 'You'll Own Nothing. And You'll Be Happy.': Welcome to the New Age of Tyranny

“Nesta fought every step of the way.

She did not make it easy for them. She clawed and kicked and bucked.

And it was not enough.

And we were not enough to save her.

I watched as she was hoisted up. Elain remained shuddering on the ground. Lucien's coat draped around her. She did not look at the Cauldron.

Cassian stirred again, his shredded wings twitching and spraying blood, his muscles quivering. At Nesta's shouts, her raging, his eyes fluttered open, glazed and unseeing, an answer to some call in his blood, a promise he'd made her. But pain knocked him under again.

Nesta was shoved into the water up to her shoulders. She bucked even as the water sprayed. She clawed and screamed her rage, her defiance.

'Put her under,' the king hissed.

The guards straining, shoved her slender shoulders. Her brown-gold head.

And as they pushed her head down, she thrashed one last time, freeing her long, pale arm

Teeth bared, Nesta pointed one finger at the King of Hybern.

One finger, a curse and a damning.

A promise.

And as Nesta's head was forced under the water, as that hand was violently shoved down, the King of Hybern had the good sense to look somewhat unnerved.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“Defying my childhood teachers by making a career out of daydreaming, coloring outside the lines, and making people laugh out loud.”
― Daisy Dexter Dobbs

“Sunrise Standoff by Stewart Stafford

The grey men of dawn,
Sniffed the air on the hill,
Grunted at me to rejoin them,
I remained where I was.

Sunrise lit ashen shapes,
The standoff continued,
An eyeless search started,
Their clawing reached me.

I refused to go with them,
So they roared in my face,
Then disappeared downhill,
Leaving me in torn freedom.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved”
― Stewart Stafford

“You fall, you rise, you continue on, refusing to believe your failures until once more they strike you down. You return, slowly diminishing, but unwilling to stop, unwilling to succumb. You are your race, Lucius. You are humanity and as with the rest of your kind, I delight in your dance, all the way to its end.”
― Ian St. Martin, Lucius: The Faultless Blade

“Tell me, because I really am quite curious. What precisely did you expect to happen when my dear perfidious brother brought me here? Did you truly believe I would be content to serve out the rest of my days as your sport? Did you truly believe I would not kill every single one of you, and hurl this satellite into your little cesspool of a city? You have no idea what you have unleashed upon yourself. I relish death. It holds no power over me, Eldar, because it holds no mystery. I have drunk from the well of oblivion time and again. I have bathed in chemical fire within the shattering bones of a warship as its reactor split and gave birth to a momentary star. I have felt the edge of fourteen blades as they sundered my hearts. I have drowned at the bottom of a world of endless ocean. I have tasted the most potent poisons this reality and the ones beyond can produce. I have been executed, assassinated, pulverised and ground to mulch. Yet here I stand. Against the very forces that set and order reality, here I stand. Unbowed. Undefeated. Eternal. What can you possibly offer, to threaten me?”
― Ian St. Martin, Lucius: The Faultless Blade