Elijah Stepanovich > Quotes

“She has been a god too long to remember how to kneel.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“When a people forget their stories, they don’t become modern. They become hollow.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“That’s how they keep you quiet. Forget the shape of your soul, and you start mistaking silence for peace.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“I want the next goddamn tyrant who tries to burn the past down to choke on the ash.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“No point telling a man what he already knows. Only thing I can do is remind him he hasn’t forgotten.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“We were a single, devastating force, two halves of a primordial power, our bond forged in the fires of creation and tempered in the blood of unending war.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“I gave you rage,” he said. “You turned it into discipline. Do not forget your fury.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“You are the storm’s echo, and the fire’s breath. You are the hinge upon which the next world turns.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“You going to actually teach, or just stare into space again while pretending you’re forming a thesis thought?”
“Not fair,” I said, sipping my own tea. It had cooled just enough to taste the bitterness, a familiar tang. “I stare very academically.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“They’ve turned language into a weapon. Make people afraid of the truth and they’ll burn it themselves.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“I never chose the rose because it was soft. Men mistake it for a symbol of fragility, of perfume and petals, of dainty femininity wrapped in velvet and silk. They forget the thorns. They always do. That’s why it’s perfect and that’s why it’s mine. The rose doesn’t beg to be touched. It dares, and if you reach for it without reverence, it bleeds you.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“I had thought, foolishly, that knowledge could survive anything. That memory, if carefully preserved, would always endure, but now I saw the brutal truth. It wasn’t fire or war or overt violence that erased a people; it was forgetting. Quiet, systemic forgetting.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“And now here he was again, reborn and fractured, bleeding a power he didn't yet understand while still trying to protect a world that would kill him for it.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“Myths are not mere explanations; they’re mirrors. They reflect us, yes, but they also profoundly shape us, guiding the contours of our souls. If something lives in your blood long enough, if it resonates deep within your soul, it becomes more than metaphor; it becomes truth, undeniable and real.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“We remembered it all. Not just the pain. Not just the deaths, but the joy, the laughter, the quiet moments of peace. The first kiss in a ruined orchard before the skies fell, before the world broke. The laughter shared between desperate missions. The quiet hours spent watching stars in a world too cruel to deserve them.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“Whatever you think you’re running from, it’s not chasing you. It’s inside you. It always has been.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder