Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

Of all things, men most love to watch ohers face Death. It reminds them they yet live.

If you clenched your teeth hard enough, and took enough strides, you could get anywhere. One painful, weary, freezing, guilty step at a time.

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.

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

Amazing the rubbish idiots will believe if you shout it loudly enough.

A dour-faced woman was working at a spinning wheel on a doorstep, and she frowned at Logen as he walked past with the unconscious apprentice over his shoulder. Logen smiled back at her. She was no beauty, that was sure, but it had been a very long time. The woman ducked into her house and kicked the door shut, leaving the wheel spinning. Logen sighed. The old magic was still there.

Conscience and the cock-rot are hardly equivalent,' snapped Lorsen. 'Indeed,' said Cosca, significantly. 'The cock-rot is rarely fatal.

We're all like children, Rikke. The older you get, the more you realise the grown-ups won't suddenly walk in and set things right. You want things right, you have to put 'em right yourself.

That's the trouble with answers. They're never as exciting as the questions, somehow.

Jezal swallowed and hunched his shoulders, watching the chunks of long dead wood file slowly past like rows of tombstones. "I don't like this," he muttered under his breath. "You think I do?" Bayaz frowned grimly over at him. "You think any of us do? Men must sometimes do what they do not like if they are to be remembered. It is through struggle, not ease, that fame and honor are won. It is through conflict, not peace, that wealth and power are gained.

He'd done the right thing. Maybe. Or maybe there's no such thing.

It is my sad observation that some men always want more.

There is a time for wondering what a man wants," said Fror, no fear at all in his. "And there is a time for splitting his head. This is that second time.

Weapons,' hissed Dow. 'Weapons, it has to be.' For once, Tul agreed with him. 'Weapons, chief. Let's give 'em a lesson.' Not even Forley spoke up for staying out of a fight this time, but Threetrees thought it out for a bit still, taking his moment, not to be hurried. Then he nodded. 'Weapons it is.

You get what you give, in the long run, and manners cost nothing.

Cause my mother says boys whine about what's done. Men decide what will be." "You always listen to your mother?" "I complain about it, but yes.

lies. The hardest kind to see through. The kind you tell yourself.

Why?' she hissed. Why indeed? 'I give you orders,' he barked, 'not fucking reasons!

Rejoice in what you have. Power, wealth, fame, they are ghosts! They are like the breeze, impossible to hold. There is no grand destination. Every path ends at the Last Door. Revel in the sparks one person strikes from another." She huddled into her cloak of rags. "They are the only light in the darkness of time.

Words are weapons. They should be handled with proper care.

Everyone should forgive themselves, Vick." He gave her wrist another squeeze then let her go, looking out towards the lake again. "After all… no one else will.

When life is a cell, there is nothing more liberating than captivity.

Hoping for a thing often seems the best way o' bringing on the opposite

These boots are worth more than you, damn it!' Shadikshirram was sitting on her bed, eyes shining wet, straining forward and trying to grab her foot but so drunk she kept missing. When she saw him she sagged back. 'Give me a hand, eh?' 'As long as you don't need two,' said Yarvi. She gurgled with laughter. 'You're a clever little crippled bastard, aren't you? I swear the gods sent you. Sent you . . . to get my boots off.