Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

swear, the more you give a man, the more he demands, and the less happy he becomes. No one ever appreciates what he gets for nothing.

Probably been sure he'd got the right god, the right king, the right cause. Everyone finds a way to make their side the right one, after all. Now, as he stumbled back trying to hold his neck together, he found it's not the righteous win, but them who strike first and strike hardest.

Vurms stopped in his tracks. "You wouldn't dare!" Glokta smiled. His most revolting, leering, gap-toothed smile. "You'd have to be a bold man to bet your life on what I'd dare. How bold are you?

She'd some frown on her, that woman.

Everything sounds fairer in the daylight.

who tries to please everyone pleases no one at all.

The thing about rowing, you face backward. Always looking into the past, never the future. Always seeing what you're losing, never what you've got to gain.

The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.

He had helped her, often. Financial assistance, from the good of his heart. That was why he kept coming here. To help these poor girls, driven into lives of debauchery by the harsh times. If they wished to express their natural gratitude, he would not demean them by refusing.

He'd never been one for war cries. Why tell your enemy where you are? They'll learn soon enough. Surprise, that's the key. Whether you're fighting one man or a thousand or ten thousand. The more you're fighting, the more important it becomes, 'cause shock spreads faster'n plague, faster'n fire, and turns the bravest into cowards. So he rushed up silent as winter, silent as sickness.

Leo saw now that his father had been wrong. It's after the battle. That's when a man finds out who he truly is. He was no hero. He never had been. He was a fool. A great bloated tower of vanity. It had got his friends, his allies and hundreds who'd followed him killed. Now it would get him killed, too.

What is the point in prosperity, after all, if everyone has it?

He'll trip over his own cock soon enough, then you can laugh at the outcome without getting your hands dirty. If I've learned one thing, it's that there's rarely any need to wade into the bitter ocean for your vengeance. It'll wash up on the shore soon enough.

People like things that are simple. Black and white. Good and evil. They want to make a choice and tell themselves they were right. But as His Eminence is fond of saying, the real world is painted in greys. The truth is complicated, full of mixed emotions and blurred outcomes and each-way bets. The truth… is a hard sell.

Vengeance is never halfway as simple, or halfway as sweet, as you think it's going to be.

I think I picked up some passengers from one of those women at the tavern. Little bastards don't half give a man an itch.' Huh. The women are paid to go there. One might have thought the lice would have better taste.

Well, that's the end of that, I reckon. You know what, Furious?" And he grinned sideways at West. "I'm getting to like you, boy.

He fell back, blood pouring from his split mouth. He was trying to say something but all he could say was blood and that was eloquence enough, in its way.

Fuck," he whispered. "Aye," said Shivers. Craw almost took a tumble on the wet grass. 'Til he remembered there was an awful lot a man could be saying fuck about. That's the beauty of the word. It can mean just about anything, depending on how things stand.

All times are end times for someone.

Those were the times. Those were still the times, and maybe always would be.

Strange, isn't it? You keep having to check how disgusting it is. Then, one day, you check and you find you actually like it. Soon after, no other drink will quite scratch that itch. I've often felt that people are the same.

Once you set your mind on killing, it is hard to choose the number of the dead.

But laws did not appear at all the rigid pillars they once had. If the Great Change had proved anything, it was that—with enough force, with enough fear—one could bend them into whatever knots one pleased.