Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

When you tell a lie, you have to sound like you believe it. Goes double for the ones you tell yourself.

The wiser a man is, the more he stands ready to be educated.

The dead can forgive. The dead can be forgiven. The rest of us have better things to do. (Monza Murcatto)

The world is full of monsters, after all. Perhaps the best one can hope for is to have the most terrible on your side.

There are few men with more blood on their hands than me. None, that I know of. The Bloody-Nine they call me, my enemies, and there's a lot of 'em. Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nothing but more blood. It follows me now, always, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never be free of it. I should never be free of it. I've earned it. I've deserved it. I've sought it out. Such is my punishment.

Doing better next time. That's what life is.

When one man knowingly kills another, they call it murder! When society causes the deaths of thousands, they shrug and call it a fact of life.

If there was a God, the world seemed exactly the way it would be if there wasn't one.

Fools boast of what they will do. Heroes do it.

Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipe. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency.

A man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he find entirely beyond sufferance

A choice between killing and dying is no choice at all. You have to be realistic about these things. b

The lowly have small ambitions, and are satisfied with small indulgences. They need not get fair treatment. They need only think that they do...

Trust. It was a word that only liars used. A word the truthful had no need of.

Got to have fear to have courage,

Savor the little moments, son, that's my advice. They're what life is. All the little things that happen while you're waiting for something else.

You are Shenkt? I expected more." "Pray to whatever god you believe in that you never see more." "I do not pray." Shenkt leaned close, and whispered in his ear. "I advise you to start.

And Yarvi realized that Death does not bow to each person who passes her, does not sweep out her arm respectfully to show the way, speaks no profound words, unlocks no bolts. The key upon her chest is never needed, for the Last Door stands always open. She herds the dead through impatiently, needles of rank or fame or quality. She has an ever-lengthening queue to get through. A blind procession, inexhaustible.

Different men have different ways, Logen had told him once, and you have to have fear to have courage.

They've strengthened the walls since last year. I wouldn't fancy trying to storm the place." "Don't pretend you'd have the guts to storm the place" "I wouldn't fancy telling someone else to storm the place" "Don't pretend you'd have the guts to give the orders" "I wouldn't fancy watching you tell someone else to storm the place." "No.

The man is a monster. The worst I have ever seen, in fact, since I last looked in the mirror. The truth? I am rotting too. I am buried alive, and already rotting. If I was not such a coward I would kill myself, but I am, and so I must content myself with killing others in the hope that one day, if I can only wade deep enough in blood, I will come out clean.

Have you no pity?' Glokta could only shrug. 'I did have. As a boy I was soft-hearted beyond the point of foolishness. I swear, I would cry at a fly caught in a spider's web.' He grimaced at a brutal spasm through his leg as he turned for the door. 'Constant pain has cured me of that.

Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit.

It can be a fearsome weapon, patience. One that few men ever learn to use.