Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

A cynic might observe that the scriptures can be used to support both sides of every argument.

Sometimes a difficult journey does not deliver its full benefit until long after one returns. The trials are brief, but the wisdom gained lasts a lifetime!

Honest men are so very rare, they are often mistaken for criminals, for rebels, for madmen. What were your crimes, anyway, but to be different?' 'Robbery the first time, and I served seven years. When they caught me again there were eighty-four counts, with fourteen murders.' Cosca cocked an eyebrow. 'But we're you truly guilty?' 'Yes' He frowned for a moment then waved it away. 'Nobody's perfect. Lets leave the past behind us.

I am a bottomless well of revelation but cannot force the ignorant to drink.

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.

nothing proclaims disunity like shrill proclamations of unity on every corner.

That's what war does. Strips people and places of their identities and turns them into enemies in a line, positions to be taken, resources to be foraged. Anonymous things that can be carelessly crushed, and stolen, and burned without guilt.

Water dripping from his slapping fruits

You can have enemies you never really meet, Logen had plenty. You can kill men you don't know, he'd done it often. But you can't truly hate a man without loving him first, and there's always a trace of that love left over.

severed heads,' Cosca was explaining, 'never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic, sensibility,They can make a point a great deal more eloquently then those still attached.

To the starving man, bread is beautiful. To the homeless man, a roof is beautiful. To the drunkard, wine is beautiful. Only those who want for nothing else need find beauty in a lump of rock. "Stolicus

War is no place for good men.

One must keep a close eye on the current definitions. To be unpatriotic would be terrible. To be patriotic in the wrong way could be fatal.

Plans have a way of coming apart when you lean om 'em

You would've thought the more pain you suffered, the more you'd get used to it, but it was the other way around.

You can't become attached to things, not out here in the wild.

Glokta felt his hand bunching into a fist on the parapet. 'We must make the Gurkish pay for every stride of ground.' We must make them pay for my ruined leg. 'For every inch of dirt.' For my missing teeth. 'For every meagre shack, and crumbling hut, and worthless stretch of dust.' For my weeping eye, and my twisted back, and my repulsive shadow of a life. He licked at his empty gums. 'Make them pay.

A man who gives all his thought to doing good, but no thought to the consequences …" Father Yarvi lifted his withered hand and pressed its one crooked finger into Brand's chest. "That is a dangerous man.

In the valleys where I was born they say it is God's sword, dropped from the heavens.' 'Don't you?' asked Flood. Whirrun rubbed some dirt from the crosspiece with his thumb. 'I used too.' 'Now?' 'God makes things, no? God is a farmer. A craftsman. A midwife. God gives things life.' He tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. 'What would God want with a sword?

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.

What is it about power, that it has to be higher up than everyone else? Can a man not be powerful on the ground floor?

One should learn the lessons of history. The mistakes of the past need only be made once.

Time hasn't been kind." "Time never is. A fighter keeps fighting even so. Thought you were a fighter?

I don't trust a man who drinks,' he growled, not bothered about dressing it up. 'A man takes to drinking, then he gets weak, then his mind goes.' Cosca sadly shook his head. 'You have it back to front. A man's mind goes, then he gets weak, then he takes to drink. The bottle is the symptom, not the cause.