Joe Abercrombie quotes: top 445 famous quotes by Joe Abercrombie

“Has it ever occured to you, Master Ninefingers, that a sword is different from other weapons? Axes and maces and so forth are lethal enough, but they hang on the belt like dumb brutes. But a sword ... a sword has a voice.
Sheathed it has little to say, to be sure, but you need only put your hand on the hilt and it begins to whisper in your enemy's ear. A gentle word. A word of caution. Do you hear it?
Now, compare it to the sword half drawn. It speaks louder, does it not? It hisses a dire threat. It makes a deadly promise. Do you hear it?
Now compare it to the sword full drawn. It shouts now, does it not? It screams defiance! It bellows a challenge! Do you hear it?”

— Joe Abercrombie

“The fool strikes. The wise man smiles, and watches, and learns. Then strikes.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“You were a hero round these parts. That's what they call you when you kill so many people the word murderer falls short.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Luck is a woman. She's drawn to those that least deserve her.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“As a writer, you have to first of all write what you want to. Listen to advice, by all means, but don't get bogged down in it.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Sometimes when I'm really enjoying a book, I'll read a sentence or paragraph and just think - how can someone's head be wired in such a way that they'd come up with that?”

— Joe Abercrombie

“But you can't truly hate a man without loving him first, and there's always a trace of that love left over.”

— 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

“A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.”

— Joe Abercrombie

History is littered with dead good men.

— Joe Abercrombie

Some things have to be done. It's better to do them, than to live with the fear of them.

— Joe Abercrombie

“Justice can have what's left when I'm done.”

— 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

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 find that we are ... this.

— Joe Abercrombie

“The dead can forgive. The dead can be forgiven. The rest of us have better things to do. (Monza Murcatto)”

— Joe Abercrombie

“A whore with a veil is mysterious. God's ways appear to be ... insane.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“One last chance. That's all I'm asking." He had lost count of the number of last chances he had wasted. "Just one more. God!" He had never believed in God for an instant. "Fates!" He had never believed in Fates either. "Anyone!" He had never believed in anything much beyond the next drink. "Just one ... more ... chance."
"Alright. One more."
Cosca blinked. "God? Is that ... you?"
Someone chuckled. A woman's voice, and a sharp, mocking, most ungodlike sort of a chuckle. "You can kneel if you like, Cosca.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“He would have liked to weigh his choices, but for that you need more than one.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“She poured out a measure but Temple declined. 'Drink and I have had some long and painful conversations and found we simply can't agree.'
'Drink and I can't agree either.' She shrugged and tossed it down herself. 'But we keep on having the argument.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“A man doesn't put on a mask unless he's got some dark work in mind.”

— Joe Abercrombie

I've been on jobs like that before, everyone stuck on the money not the work, watching their backs every minute. Bad for your health and your business. We'll do this civilised, or not at all. What do you say?
"I say civilised," said Shenkt. "For pity's sake, let's kill like honest men.

— Joe Abercrombie

Different men have different ways, Logen had told him once, and you have to have fear to have courage.

— Joe Abercrombie

“I have seen hell, it is a great city under siege.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Loyalty's a dangerous foundation. Tends to wash away in a storm. Self-interest stands in any weather.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“I spent half my childhood in the shadows. Hiding from my father or my brother. Creeping from a place of solitude to another. Seeing while unseen, and pretending I was a part of what I saw. Making up a life where I wasn't an outcast.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“You are lucky, Thorn. You are very lucky."
"Doubtless. Not every girl gets to be stabbed through the face."
"And by a duke of royal blood too!”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Lies. The hardest kind to see through. The kind you tell yourself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“What? A family?" Ninefingers frowned, rubbing grimly at the stump of his middle finger. "I did have one. And now I've got another. You don't pick your family, you take what you'er given and you make the best of it." He pointed at
Ferro, then at Quai. "You see her, and him, and you?" He slapped his hand down on Jezal's shoulder. "That's my family now, and I don't pal on losing a brother today, you understand?”

— Joe Abercrombie

“We all got our reasons ... good men and bad men. It's all a matter of where you stand.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Friends can be useful. If nothing else, a friend is one less enemy.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Facing an enemy on the battlefield took courage, but you had your friends beside you. Standing alone against your friends, that was a different kind of courage.”

— Joe Abercrombie

She surely can cook a fight from the most peaceful ingredients. But nothing worth doing is easy. I love her in spite of it. I love her because of it. I love her." And his face broke out in that grin again. "Every day's a new adventure, that's for sure.

— Joe Abercrombie

“Some men you stick to right off. But it's those that take time to stick that stick longest.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“And he realized then that he had not lost all those times in the training square because he lacked the skill, or the strength, or even a hand. He had lacked the will. And somewhere on the South Wind, somewhere in the trackless ice, somewhere in this ancient ruin, he had found it.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“No one gets what they deserve.”

— Joe Abercrombie

They say the seed you scatter will be the seed you harvest,

— Joe Abercrombie

“He was less and less sure with every day that being a better man was worth all the effort.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“In bloody days, swords were worth more than gods.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“There's no curse like getting what you want.”

— Joe Abercrombie

Did you see it?" asked Yarvi.
"I had that questionable privilege."
"What do you think?"
"She is wretched. She is all pride and anger. She has too much confidence and too little. She does not know herself." The figure pushed back her hood. A black-skinned old woman with a face lean as famine and hair shaved to gray fuzz. She picked her nose with one long forefinger, carefully examined the results, then flicked them away "The girl is stupid as a stump. Worse. Most stumps have the dignity to rot quietly without causing offense."
"I'm right here," Thorn managed to hiss from her hands and knees.
"Just where the drunk boy put you." The woman flashed a smile at Brand that seemed to have too many teeth. "I like him, though: he is pretty and desperate. My favorite combination.

— Joe Abercrombie

Strange how, as long as the hardship lasts, we can stand it. As soon as the crisis is over, the strength all leeches away in an instant.

— Joe Abercrombie

“I'm no high judge of righteousness."
"Who is?"
"But I find this to be a good thing."
"Don't let anyone know, it might ruin my reputation."
Yarvi saw an old woman glaring at him from across the square, and he smiled back, and waved, and watched her scuttle away.
"It seems I've become the villain of this piece.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“The Great Leveller, Dogman whispered to himself, since he was in a thoughtful frame of mind. That's what the hillmen call him. Death, that is. He levels all differences. Named Men and nobodies, south or north. He catches everyone in the end, and he treats each man the same.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“We all have luck, good and bad. It's how you meet it that matters”

— Joe Abercrombie

“Fear not, my doves!" Thorn jumped as someone flung an arm around her shoulders. The strange woman who had watched Thorn fight Brand a few days before thrust her gray-stubbled skull between her and her mother. "For the wise Father Yarvi has placed your daughter's education in my dextrous hands."
Thorn hadn't thought her spirits could drop any lower, but the gods had found a way. "Education?"
The woman hugged them tighter, her smell a heady mix of sweat, incense, herbs and piss. "It's where I teach and you learn."
"And who ... " Thorn's mother gave the ragged woman a nervous look, "or what ... are you?"
"Lately, a thief." When that sharpened nervousness into alarm she added brightly, "but also an experienced killer!”

— Joe Abercrombie

“I am sure you understand that a reputation for ruthlessness can be useful. A great ruler, especially one of as wide and various a country as Gurkhul, must first be feared. He would desire to be loved also, but that is a luxury. Fear is essential. Whatever you may have heard, Uthman is neither a man of peace, nor of war. He is a man of ... what would be your word? Necessity. He is a man of the right tool at the right time.”