Joe Abercrombie Quotes

If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?

— 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

Fearlessness is a fool's boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that's the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who's worth a damn feels fear. It's the use you make of it that counts.

— Joe Abercrombie

“Those with the least always lose the most in war.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“It always amazes me, how swiftly problems can be solved, once you start cutting things off people.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“What do the dice say?"
Dice say nothing. They are dice."
Why roll'em, then?"
They are dice. What else would I do with them?”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.”

— Joe Abercrombie

Love is a fine cushion to rest upon, but only hate can make you a better person.

— Joe Abercrombie

A man lost in the desert must take such water as he is offered, no matter who it comes from.

— Joe Abercrombie

“Something dug into the Bloody-Nine's back, but there was no pain. It was a sign. A message in a secret tongue, that only he could understand. It told him where the next dead man was standing.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipe. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency.”

— 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

I will confess!" shrieked Teufel, "I will confess!"
"Excellent," said Glokta brightly.
"Excellent," said Severard.
"Etherer," said Practical Frost.

— Joe Abercrombie

“Trust is like glass. Lovely, but only a fool rests lots of weight on it.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Mercy and weakness are the same thing in war, and there's no prize for nice behavior.”

— Joe Abercrombie

The skies make no special dispensation for Magi, boy, they piss on everyone the same.

— 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

Very well, Practical Vitari, if you really can't resist me. You'll have to go on top, though, if you don't mind.

— Joe Abercrombie

“First it is done to us, then we do it to others, then we order it done. Such is the way of things”

— Joe Abercrombie

“You have to be realistic”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Unsheathe your swords!' He considered that. 'Or cheaper weapons! Let us ... do some good!”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Life is a series of things we would rather not do.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“The food of fear is ignorance, Mother Gundring used to say. The death of fear is knowledge. When you study a race of men you find they are just men like any others.”

— Joe Abercrombie

A few glasses of wine can be the difference between finding a man a hilarious companion or an insufferable moron.

— Joe Abercrombie

“Broken hearts heal with time, but broken teeth never do.”

— Joe Abercrombie

A choice between killing and dying is no choice at all. You have to be realistic about these things. b

— Joe Abercrombie

“She had a crooked smile on her face as she turned, but it slid off suddenly when she saw who was standing there. Glokta snorted. 'Don't worry, I get that reaction from everyone. Even myself, every morning, when I look into the mirror.' If I can even manage to stand up in front of the damn thing.”

— Joe Abercrombie

There was a time he'd heard tales of Dab Sweet and he'd stuck thumbs in his belt and chin to the sky and tricked himself that was how his life had been. But the years scraped by hard as ever and he got less and the stories more 'til they were tales of a man he'd never met succeeding at what he'd never have dreamed of attempting.

— 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

The gods love to laugh at a happy man, however.

— Joe Abercrombie

“Yarvi soon learned only to sip the results, since unwrapping to piss in that cold was an act of heroism that earned grunted congratulations from the others, all the more heartfelt since everyone knew sooner or later they would have to present their own nethers to the searing wind.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Why give them a proper burning?" Rulf caught the lad by the arm. "Because if we beat beggars here, we're no better than beggars. If we beat great men, we're greater still.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“They passed lands that had no name, where fens of mirror pools stretched into unknown distances, thousands of fragments of sky sprinkled across this bastard offspring of earth and sea, lonely birds calling out over the desolation, and Yarvi breathed deep the salt chill and longed for home.”

— 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

“No one cares about the past any more," he whispered. "They don't see that you can't have a future without a past.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“She narrowed her eyes. "You lost the collar I gave you."
It chafed. And I wasn't born to be a slave.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Gold and silver is everything to everyone. Some of us have enough of it to pretend otherwise.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“He glanced over at Luthar, sneering down into his bowl as though it was full of piss. No respect. He glanced over at Ferro, staring yellow knives at him through narrowed eyes. No trust. He shook his head sadly. Without trust and respect the group would fall apart in a fight like walls without mortar.
Still, Logen had won over tougher audiences, in his time. Threetrees, Tul Duru, Black Dow, Harding Grim, he'd fought each one in single combat, and beaten them all. Spared each man's life, and left him bound to follow. Each one had tried their best to kill him, and with good reasons too, but in the end Logen had earned their trust, and their respect, and their friendship even. Small gestures and a lot of time, that was how he'd done it. 'Patience is the chief of virtues,' his father used to say, and 'you won't cross the mountains in a day.' Time might be against them, but there was nothing to be gained by rushing. You have to be realistic about these things.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“I'm no drunk," croaked Cosca. "I simply like the taste of wine. So much so that I have to drink some every few hours or become violently ill." He clung to his fork while the room swayed around him, fixed his aching smile while they chuckled away. He hoped they enjoyed their laughter while they could, because Nicomo Cosca always laughed last. Provided he wasn't being sick, of course.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Courage can come fro many places, and be made of many things, and yesterday's coward can become tomorrow's hero in an instant if the time is right.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Enough pain makes a coward of anyone.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“The stench of self-satisfaction is becoming quite suffocating. If you mean to kill me, blast me to a cinder now and let's be done,”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Ain't they people too, though?" muttered Beck, thinking of the face of that Union man lying dead in the shack yesterday. "Just like us?" Whirrun squinted across at him. "More than likely they are. But if you start thinking like that, well ... you'll get no one killed at all.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“A man's worst enemies are his own ambitions.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“He was not sure what he had been expecting. Outstanding beauty, or stunning grace, or something that struck him instantly to the heart. But Ankran's family were an ordinary-looking pair. Most people are, of course, to those that don't know them.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Maybe her father hadn't been quite the hero she always reckoned him. Maybe her mother wasn't quite the villain either. Maybe no one's all one or all the other.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“It's an easy thing to make a man a carcass. He knew a thousand ways to do it. But once you've done it, there's no going back. One minute he's a man, all full up with hopes, and thoughts, and dreams. A man with friends, and family, and a place where he's from. Next minute he's mud.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“The thing about rowing, you face backward. Always looking into the past, never the future. Always seeing what you're losing, never what you've got to gain.”

— 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

“I can see her on your arm like an empty dress, a kind of echo at a higher pitch.”

— Joe Abercrombie