Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

Bang! The end of his little finger, now, and three more pieces of the rest. His middle finger was down to the knuckle, almost. Severard stared, his eyes with with horror, his breath coming short, fast gasps. Shock, amazement, stunned terror. Glokta leaned down to his ear. 'I hope you weren't planning to take up the violin, Severard. You'll be lucky if you can play a fucking gong by the time we're done here.

Your death comes.

He wondered for an idle moment if he'd ever see her again, but it didn't look likely. You have to be realistic, after all, and getting through tomorrow seemed like quite the ambition.

In violent times folk like to kneel to violent men. In peaceful times they remember they're happier standing.

She was not a woman to be deterred by hatred: not from her workers, not from her rivals, not from the men she bullied, bribed or blackmailed to get her way. It is when they truly hate you, after all, that you know you have won. So she met the seething dislike with effortless superiority, paraded past with her shoulders back and chin high. If she was to be cast as the villain, so be it. They were always the most interesting characters anyway.

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!

Everything beautiful has a dark side, and some of us must dwell there, so that others can laugh in the light.

If you could kill a man by frowning at his back, the Breaker of Swords would have fallen bloody through the Last Door that day, but a frown is no blade, and Thorn's hatred cut no one but her.

Grom-gil-Gorm," she said softly as she rode between Laithlin and Yarvi. "Breaker of Swords." Mother Isriun's horse shied back out of her way. "Maker of Orphans." Thorn reined in beside him, his frowning face lit red by the blazing light of her elf-bangle, and she leaned from her saddle to whisper. "Your death comes.

The failure of something great is never a simple matter, but where there is success and glory, there must also be failure and shame.

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.

Why do I do this?

His ability was exceeded only by his belief in his own ability.

It's a rare man who's made better by a bit of power.

Knowledge is so often the antidote to fear. But not here. Not now.

Well, he's scraping up what there is. Reckon we'll need every ready hand when it comes to a battle. Yours too, maybe.' 'Oh, you'll have to hold me back!' Calder slapped the hilt of his sword. 'Can't wait to get started!' 'You ever even drawn the fucking thing?' sneered Tenways, stretching his neck out to spit again. 'Just the once. I had to trim your daughter's hairy cunt before I could get at it.

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.

The sad truth is, men love to follow a man other men fear," said Clover. "Makes them feel fearsome, too. We tell the odd fond story of the good men. The straight edges. Your Rudd Threetrees, your Dogmen. But it's the butchers men love to sing of. The burners and the blood-spillers. Your Cracknut Whirruns and your Black Dows. Your Bloody-Nines. Men don't dream of doing the right thing, but of ripping what they want from the world with their strength and their will.

Her mother had always warned her a man is judged by his best moment, a woman by her worst.

Vengeance only walks a circle. From blood, back to blood. Death waits for us all. You can follow your path to her bent under a burden of rage. I did, for many years. You can let it poison you." He took a long breath, and let it sigh away. "Or you can let it go.

This was a place of learning, and wonder, and great beauty.' 'Time has not been kind to the place.' 'Time is never kind.

Yarvi: 'If we had known the hardship of it, we might have chosen another.' Shidwala: 'So it is with many choices.' Yarvi: 'All we can do now is see it through.' Shidwala: 'So it is with many choices.

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.

Young love is a treasure truly wasted on the young,