Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

In the end … the only thing a man can really do … is pick his moment. Watch for the opening, and recognise it when it comes, and seize it.

Men must sometimes do what they do not like if they are to be remembered. It is through struggle, not ease, that fame and honour are won. It is through conflict, not peace, that wealth and power are gained.

Well-used memories, picked over and worn thin like a favourite shirt.

There's no curse like getting what you want.

Principles are like clothes,' said Vick, straightening her jacket. 'You have to change them to suit the audience.

El necio ataca -le había dicho-. El sabio sonríe, observa y aprende...y luego ataca.

It all slips by so fast. Slips by and you hardly notice, like leaves on the water. Savour the little moments, son, that's my advice. They're what life is. All the things that happen while you're waiting for something else.

Ningún camino digno de recorrer es fácil —repuso el padre Yarvi—. Cada uno de vosotros tiene puntos fuertes de los que el otro carece, puntos débiles que el otro compensa. Es algo hermoso, y muy excepcional, encontrar a alguien que… —Miró con gravedad las ramas que se movían sobre ellos, como si pensara en algo muy distante y doloroso—. Que te complete.

Not sneering Emperors with 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.

Better to do it, than to live with the fear of it, and so forth.

He trusted to God, since there was no one else. He hoped for heaven. But he fully expected the alternative.

The definition of all right changes with the passing winters, I find. I'm about all right by the standards of the last few days. Twenty years ago I'd have considered this close to death.

The older you get, the more swiftly the years pass. It's easy to forget how quickly people die.

But maybe that's what happens once the fighting stops, to a man who knows nothing but fighting. He fights himself.

There were too many bad men in the North and Caul Shivers, by most accounts, was one of the very worst. Bad men are a terrible curse, no doubt, right up until you're in bad trouble and there's one on your side. Then they're the best thing ever.

To regret the methods, you have to win." He couldn't stay on his feet any longer, and he grunted as he took one lurching step and the padded socket squeezed at his stump. "Once you've won ... who cares about the methods?

But it's 'cause real life is what it is that a man needs daydreams.

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?

Science is a system of rational thought devised to investigate the world and establish the laws by which it operates. The scientist uses those laws to achieve an effect. One which might easily appear magical in the eyes of the primitive.

have often said that life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

Surprise is like virginity. You only get the one chance at using it, and that normally turns out a crushing disappointment

But easy is for the dead,

Suddenly he felt that there had been so much he needed to say to his father. He had always supposed they would discuss the important things later. The profound things. But it would never happen. There had only been a fixed time in his presence, and Orso had pissed it all away talking about the weather, and there would be no more.

No matter how great and glorious the making, time will unmake it. No matter how strong the word, strong the thought, strong the law, all must return to chaos.