Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

Time was he'd reckoned himself a quick thinker but the only thing moving fast right then was his cock.

Silence is a warrior's best armour, the saying goes. Hard looks and hard words have never won a battle yet, but they've lost a few.

No armour.' Yon was helping Brack into his mail, shaking his head as he frowned over at Whirrun. 'What kind of a bloody hero don't wear bloody armour?' 'Armour …' mused Whirrun, licking a finger and scrubbing some speck of dirt from the pommel of his sword, 'is part of a state of mind … in which you admit the possibility … of being hit.

Everything simple. No grinding worry, no chafing frustration, no wasted days slipping past. Only the beautiful, terrible now.

He always told me that to change the world you must first burn it down.

A man who doesn't want opinions should keep his own mouth shut.

Now he'd started crying he couldn't seem to stop. No more than you can rebuild a burst dam when the flood's still surging through. That's the problem with making yourself hard. Once you crack, there's no putting yourself back together.

He frowned over at a set of great pots, man high, fires banked underneath 'em, steam pouring from inside. "What the bloody hell are the pots for?" asked Scenn. "Soup or something?" "They're for rendering down the corpses, d'you see." Isern frowned at her spear's bloody head. "So they can get at the bones." Scenn shook his head in disbelief. "What a pack of arseholes.

We don't get much time, and time feeling sorry for yourself is time wasted.

All I know is there's no changing yesterday. You can only look to do better tomorrow.

In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated." Gustave Le Bon

It is hard to lose something." Skara turned back toward the towering truss. "But it gives you the chance to make something better.

Oh yes, you understand better than most how this will work. Knowledge is so often the antidote to fear. But not here. Not now.

Debauchery is profitable under any government

Enemies are the price of success

But she smells too good, d'you see? Not like a person. Like a cake. Like the best cake you ever tasted.

There was a long, ugly pause. Uglier than the child of a man and a sheep, as the hillmen have it.

The wagon's wheels squealed, the cargo rattled, the straining crew bellowed at one another. Then Koll said, quietly, "Are you my brother, then?" "Guess so. If you'll have me." "Reckon I could do worse." The lad shrugged, as if it didn't matter much either way. But Brand got the feeling it did.

If you have to tell someone you are furious, and then, furthermore, that you mean it, your fury has failed to achieve its desired effect.

Cosca squinted through his eyeglass towards the mass of soldiery on the far side of the river. The enemy, though he held no personal rancour towards them. The battlefield was no place for rancour.

He was one of those men loves to be despised. That treats loathing like gold, to be clawed for and hoarded up. He hadn't learned yet that hate's the one thing never runs out.

I'm no high judge of righteousness." "Who is?" "But I find this to be a good thing." "Don't let anyone know, it might ruin my reputation." Yarvi saw an old woman glaring at him from across the square, and he smiled back, and waved, and watched her scuttle away. "It seems I've become the villain of this piece.

Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can,

They were well matched. Optimist and pessimist, idealist and pragmatist, dreamer and cynic.