Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

Modesty's for folk with nothing to boast of.

Promises are like flowers, often given, rarely kept

A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success.

You have to pick your moment. He'd always said so. Told everyone who'd listen. Have to recognise it when it comes, and seize it, with no care for the past and no worries about the future.

We'll see. Thanks for drawing your sword for me. I always had you down as a man to back the favourite.' 'So did I. But for a moment up there you reminded me of your father.' Pale-as-Snow planted his own boot on the wall beside Calder's. 'I remembered how it felt to follow a man I admire.' Calder snorted. 'I wouldn't get used to that feeling.' 'Don't worry, it's gone already.

Anyway, it seems to me a man can do an awful lot of evil in no time at all. Swing of a blade is all it takes. Doing good needs time. And all manner of complicated efforts. Most men don't have the patience for it. 'Specially not these days.

Why do I do it, when it always hurts me? Why must we test the pain? Tongue the ulcer, rub the blister, pick the scab?

He tried to tell himself the dead are dead, but he knew Jenner had been right. Their ghosts stick in the minds of those that knew them, loved them, hated them. Those that killed them most of all.

Enough to make a man believe in God,' said Temple. 'And that He's somewhere else.

Does the devil know he is a devil?

And I suppose it's a woman's place to simper on the sidelines and cheer as idiots rack up the casualties?" "We all find ourselves cheering for idiots from time to time, that's a fact of life. There really is no point heaping scorn on my subordinates. If a person is worthy of contempt, they'll bury themselves soon enough without help.

You are a gentleman, sir,' muttered Cosca. 'I am a murderer.' 'I see no reason why a man cannot be both . . .

Dogman and Dow, Tul and Grim, West and Pike. Six of them, stood in a circle and looking down at two piles of cold earth. Below in the valley, the Union were busy burying their own dead, Dogman had seen it. Hundreds of 'em, in pits for a dozen each. It was a bad day for men, all in all, and a good one for the ground. Always the way, after a battle. Only the ground wins. Shivers

You have to learn to love the small things in life... you have to love the small things, when you've nothing else.

Killing a man by accident had made her a villain. Killing another on purpose had made her a hero. But all she could do was frown at the body as they dragged it out, and feel there was something very odd in all this.

One cannot climb high without standing on others, and all she had wanted was to reach the top. What a waste it all seemed now. There is nothing at the summit, in the end, but a long drop.

There's nothing worth less than what men think of you after you're back in the mud.

The faster you run from the past, the faster it catches you. All you can do is turn and face it. Embrace it. Try and meet the future stronger for it.

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

People without hope are a dangerous crowd, even in a republic.

You must make of your quim a stone.

It's a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you are lying on your death bead, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes.

Life's a queue of small irritations with the Last Door at the end.

It is healthy to be disabused of our self-deceptions every now and then, even if it hurts.