Joe Abercrombie Quotes

He blamed every fucker available excepting, of course, the one who was actually to blame, the one sitting in his saddle and getting colder, hungrier, and more lost with every unpleasant moment. ‘Shit!’ he roared at nothing.
Joe Abercrombie
Some men laugh easily. It makes them winning dinner companions.
Joe Abercrombie
You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza."That brought a smile to the corner of her mouth. The corner he couldn't see. "Well. Facts are facts.
Joe Abercrombie
On the battlefield there are no rules.
Joe Abercrombie
Give Bethod a kick from me, once you have him under your boot.""That I will, unless he gets me under his.""Never easy, kicking upwards.
Joe Abercrombie
I've made peace with myself.Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win.Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting.
Joe Abercrombie
Luck is a woman. She's drawn to those that least deserve her.
Joe Abercrombie
There was no such thing as luck. Luck was a word idiots used to explain the consequences of their own rashness, and selfishness, and stupidity. More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.
Joe Abercrombie
The sunrise was the colour of bad blood. It leaked out of the east and stained the dark sky red, marked the scraps of the cloud with stolen gold. Underneath it the road twisted up the mountainside towards the fortress of Fontezarmo - a cluster of sharp towers, ash-black again the wounded heavens. The sunrise was red, black and gold.The colours of their profession.
Joe Abercrombie
The man is a monster. The worst I have ever seen, in fact, since I last looked in the mirror. The truth? I am rotting too. I am buried alive, and already rotting. If I was not such a coward I would kill myself, but I am, and so I must content myself with killing others in the hope that one day, if I can only wade deep enough in blood, I will come out clean.
Joe Abercrombie
What’s the difference? Fill a hundred pits with dead Northmen, congratulations, have a parade! Kill one man in the same uniform as you? A crime. A murder. Worse than despicable. Are we not all men? All blood and bone and dreams?
Joe Abercrombie
Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.
Joe Abercrombie
Some men you stick to right off. But it's those that take time to stick that stick longest.
Joe Abercrombie
The best steel doesn't always shine the brightest.
Joe Abercrombie
To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike.
Joe Abercrombie
Mercy and cowardice are the same," she snapped out. "But you want their land, not their lives, no? Dead men can't obey.
Joe Abercrombie
You want to be merciful. To stand in the light. I understand it. I admire it. But, my queen...Only the victors can be merciful.
Joe Abercrombie
So the fox killed his brother, the wolf. (Mother Scaer)
Joe Abercrombie
Empathy? What’s that?” Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. “It’s a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.
Joe Abercrombie
Vengeance is a way of clinging to what we have lost. A wedge in the Last Door, and through the crack we can still glimpse the faces of the dead. We strain towards it with all our being, break every rule to have it, but when we clutch it, there is nothing there. Only grief.
Joe Abercrombie
Sometimes, when someone lives in danger for too long, the only time they feel alive is when death's breathing on their shoulder.
Joe Abercrombie
One day you're something, so promising and full o' dares, so big the world's too small a place to hold you. Then, 'fore you know it, you're old, and you realise all them things you had in mind you'll never get to. All them doors you felt too big to fit through have already shut. Only one left open and it leads to nothing but nothing.
Joe Abercrombie
And Yarvi realized that Death does not bow to each person who passes her, does not sweep out her arm respectfully to show the way, speaks no profound words, unlocks no bolts. The key upon her chest is never needed, for the Last Door stands always open. She herds the dead through impatiently, needles of rank or fame or quality. She has an ever-lengthening queue to get through. A blind procession, inexhaustible.
Joe Abercrombie
I want a chance to do it all again. To do it… right.
Joe Abercrombie
When you're in hell, only a devil can point the way out.
Joe Abercrombie
Few indeed are those who get a choice. We do as we are told. We stand or fall beside those who were born near to us, who look as we do, who speak the same words, and all the while we know as little of the reasons why as does the dust we return to.
Joe Abercrombie
Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.
Joe Abercrombie
The Forest that had been about her all her life, certain as a mountain, was made ashes. The high gable that had stood for two hundred years fallen in ruin. Throvenland was torn apart like smoke on the wind. Nowhere would be safe, ever again.
Joe Abercrombie
You have to be grateful for the small things, when any minute might be your last.
Joe Abercrombie
Have a smile for breakfast, you'll be shitting joy by lunch.
Joe Abercrombie
Sometimes it doesn't matter too much what choice you make, as long as you make it quick and stick to it.
Joe Abercrombie
When was it exactly that I became... this? By small degrees, I suppose. One act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and fine we are... this.
Joe Abercrombie
When was it exactly that I became... this? By small degrees, I suppose. Once act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and fine we are... this.
Joe Abercrombie
Hurray', shouted Glokta. 'Porridge again!'He looked over at the motionless Practical. 'Porridge and honey, better than money, everything's funny, with porridge and honey!
Joe Abercrombie
Inquisitor Lorsen's thin lip curled. "There is truly nothing in you of what separates man from animal, is there? You are bereft of conscience. An utter absence of morality. You have no principle beyond the selfish."Cosca's face hardened as he leaned forwards. "Perhaps when you have faced as many disappointments and suffered as many betrayals as I, you will see it - there is no principle beyond the selfish, Inquisitor, and men are animals. Conscience is a burden we choose to bear. Morality is the lie we tell ourselves to make its bearing easier. There have been many times in my life when I have wished it was not so. But it is so.
Joe Abercrombie
The Bloody-Nine opened his mouth, and shrieked out all of his bottomless love and his endless hate in one long wail.
Joe Abercrombie
It was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back.
Joe Abercrombie
Bravery is the dead man’s virtue.
Joe Abercrombie
Lorsen shook his head in amazement. 'You truly are disgusting.''I would be the last to disagree, but you fail to see that you are worse. No man capable of greater evil than the one who thinks himself in the right. No purpose more evil than the higher purpose. I freely admit I am a villain. That's why you hired me. But I am no hypocrite.
Joe Abercrombie
You stick a bunch of drunken murderers together, ain't long before some turn to thieving, then to lying, then to bad language, and pretty soon to sobriety, raising families and making an honest living.
Joe Abercrombie
But you know what they say - old milk turns sour but old scores just get sweeter.
Joe Abercrombie
West couldn't simply leave the man like this, he didn't have it in him."Goodman Heath," he said as he approached, and the peasant looked up at him, surprised. He fumbled for his hat and made to rise, muttering apologies."No, please, don't get up." West sat down on the bench. He stared at his feet, unable to look the man in the eye. There was an awkward silence. "I have a friend who sits on the Commission for Land and Agriculture. There might be something he can do for you…" He trailed off, embarrassed, squinting up the corridor.The farmer gave a sad smile. "I'd be right grateful for anything you could do.""Yes, yes, of course, I'll do what I can." It would do no good whatsoever, and they both knew it. West grimaced and bit his lip. "You'd better take this," and he pressed his purse into the peasant's limp, calloused fingers. Heath looked at him, mouth slightly open. West gave a quick, awkward smile then got to his feet. He was very keen to be off."Sir!" called Goodman Heath after him, but West was already hurrying down the corridor, and he didn't look back.
Joe Abercrombie
I apologise, your Highness. Murder can be a painful business.
Joe Abercrombie
Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.
Joe Abercrombie
You can always make enemies of your friends,' said Sumael. 'Making friends of your enemies is harder labor.
Joe Abercrombie
The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense.
Joe Abercrombie
It's hard to be done a favor by a man you hate. It's hard to hate him so much afterwards. Losing an enemy can be worse than losing a friend, if you've had him for long enough.
Joe Abercrombie
A man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he find entirely beyond sufferance
Joe Abercrombie
They appear somewhat unreliable," he murmured."Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there's not a man of them I wouldn't trust my mother to.""Are you sure?""She's been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?
Joe Abercrombie
Trust is like glass. Lovely, but only a fool rests lots of weight on it.
Joe Abercrombie
Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.
Joe Abercrombie
The Inquisitor waited for silence. "Do you believe in anything?""Not if I can help it. Belief alone is nothing to be proud of, Inquisitor. Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.
Joe Abercrombie
It's a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you are lying on your death bead, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes.
Joe Abercrombie
The lowly have small ambitions, and are satisfied with small indulgences. They need not get fair treatment. They need only think that they do...
Joe Abercrombie
it was like staring at a whitewashed wall, but without all the emotion
Joe Abercrombie
By swap news do you mean drink?" "I do, and that excessively.
Joe Abercrombie
Memories sharp enough to cut himself on - the smells, the sounds, the feel of the air on his skin, the desperate hope and mad anger.
Joe Abercrombie
The memories of our glories fade, and rot away into half-arsed anecdotes, thin and unconvincing as some other bastard's lies. The failures, the disappointments, the regrets, they stay raw as the moments they happened.
Joe Abercrombie
Men are brittle, I reckon. They don't bend into new shapes. They get broken into them. Crushed into them.
Joe Abercrombie
Monza never had understood why getting out a tit or two made for a better painting. But painters seemed to think it did, so tits is what you got.
Joe Abercrombie