Quotessence
Home / Authors / Alexander Freed

Alexander Freed Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

Famous Alexander Freed Quotes

“I don’t imagine,” Orson said, “you’ve laid any traps? Nothing that would harm a patriot doing his duty?” “No.” “No,” Orson agreed. “I’ve always found your constancy refreshing. Galen Erso is an honest man, unaltered by stress or circumstance.” Troopers called to one another in the house behind Galen, and he stifled the impulse to turn. “Honest, perhaps. Still just a man.”

“You’ve got a newborn at home? That right?” His smile softened the chilly air, and Haki was confident she’d made the right move. “Leia,” he said. “She’s our first. War orphan.” “First is a trip. Second is easier but never easy as you expect—you figure you’ve been through the worst, then the babe turns out to have their own personality. The third, though… the third is sheer joy.”

“To truly uphold democracy is an act of humility. Democracy is the choice to accept that one’s most cherished beliefs and foundational principles may not win the day. It is a willing abnegation where we bequeath power to those we may view as wrongheaded, unfit, or abominable. It is the paradox of holding true to ourselves, even as we accept when the vote goes against us and the desires of others prevail.”

“Political historian Barouth Regorab had likened the difference between a planetary government and the Galactic Senate to that between a rural community and a metropolis: “When a person depends upon their neighbor for assistance during the harvest—when strangers are few and familial ties bind the farmer to the freighter captain—the greatest danger is shunning or exile. Mollifying your peers becomes a matter of survival. You have an incentive to iron out differences, or if necessary to bury any radical beliefs that would put you at odds with your community. “In a city of millions, however, a person may build a tailor-made community inside the larger organism. Anger your neighbor and you may move in with a friend. Become an outcast among your co-workers and you may take a job with a competitor. Diverse arts and philosophies may flourish without the flattening effect of more tight-knit communities, and differences may be celebrated. Yet a lack of common ties can also cause neighbors to see one another as rivals. Ideological opponents can be dismissed without need for engagement. And good people may slip through the cracks, lost in the chaos and written off as someone else’s problem.”

“He stood at a metaphorical cliff’s edge, stamping his foot in an effort to cause an avalanche. With Galen Erso’s treachery undone, he would gain the allegiance of Vader. With Vader’s backing, he would expose the incompetence of Tarkin—the revelation of rebel survivors from Jedha. With Tarkin humiliated, Krennic’s command of the Death Star would be uncontested, and he would confer with the Emperor himself as to how it might best be used. Krennic would be, in every way that mattered, the most powerful and decorated man in the Empire. Or he would fall from the cliff and bash his skull open on the rocks. And his Death Star would fall into the fumbling hands of Wilhuff Tarkin. Tarkin, Erso, Vader—how had so many men conspired against him for so long?”

“This was not the fate Krennic had envisioned for Jedha. The Death Star was designed to obliterate worlds, not maim them. Yet he wondered if the moon would ever recover from such an attack, or whether the cascading effects of a burning atmosphere and broken crust would result in a tortuous death played out across millennia. He felt in his bones that his weapon had exposed something profound—about the nature of worlds, about their lifeblood and their death throes—though he could not have put it into words. Maybe, he thought, that’s what poets are for.”

“At the age of fifteen, during the winter when she’d discovered smashball, romance, and her parents’ profound imperfections, Mon Mothma had decided to devote her life to studying history; decided to turn her back on her family’s political dynasty and to spend her days in a cramped study reading thousand-year-old diaries and letters and cargo manifests until her eyes burned. She would be detective, coroner, and philosopher all at once, examining means and motive and cause of death for entire civilizations. She hadn’t become a historian, of course. By the next summer, Mon’s moment of rebellion had been forgotten. Inertia and family pressures and a genuine love of governance had returned her to the road to politics. She’d gone on to become a senator (far too young, she thought now) and scrabbled for votes and smiled and kept her head above water until she’d learned how to play the game for real.”

“He'd assassinated better men than Galen—an Imperial collaborator, the man who'd built a planet killer, remorse be damned. And if Jyn came after Cassian, he'd die for his crimes. There were worse deaths. Was that what it had come to? Galen stepped forward. Cassian had the shot. But he was breathing too hard now. The rifle rose and fell. He clamped a hand on the barrel, lodged it firmly against the rocks. He was tired of crimes he never answered for. 'The Death Star is your answer. Finish this mission, and all is forgiven.' He looked at Galen Erso through his scope and saw his daughter's eyes. With a hoarse and ragged cry, he swept the rifle away from the rocks and set it in the mud at his side.”

“One day, a death squad will find Mon Mothma and Cianne hiding in their shuttle in the radiation belt of a black hole. The shuttle’s engines will be nonfunctional, its fuel spent. Without scanners, they won’t notice the TIE fighters until too late. Within the decade, the rebellion Mon built will be erased from history and erased from consciousness. Soon after, even the Empire’s censors will begin to forget the past.”