Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

He built the Empire, yet he was also the principal in its destruction. A great man, in so many ways, but great men have great faults... One should learn the lessons of history. The mistakes of the past need only be made once... Unless there are no other choices.

There can be no peace with the damn Vanstermen,

If he did nothing him and Malacus would end up robbed, and more than likely killed. You have to be realistic about these things.

Right to business is it, and no time to be friendly?' Crummock stretched his neck to the side, his arms over his head, and lifted one foot and shook it around. 'I came here because I woke in the night, and I walked out into the darkness, and the moon whispered to me. In the forest, d'you see? In the trees, and in the voices of the owls in the trees, and d'you know what the moon said?' 'That you're mad as fuck?' growled Dow.

You pick your Chief, you pick your side, you pick your crew and then you stand by 'em, whatever the wind blows up.

But a man shows his quality when circumstances are against him,

There used to be," she muttered, "but they whip it out of you. They whip you until they're sure there's nothing left." Yulwei stood there, with that pitying look on his face. Strange, how it didn't make her angry any more.

In hard times, it's easy to become hard. But here was a man who always looked for the best in folk. Didn't always find it, but never gave up looking. Wasted no time polishing his own name. Singing his own songs. Didn't have to.

Codes of honour, I fear, aren't worth the paper they're not written on.

Could the motive be nothing more than simple self-preservation? When you lose the instinct yourself, it's hard to remember how powerful it is for everyone else. He felt himself starting to smile.

Well." Glokta looked towards the summer revellers. So near to them, yet somehow in a different world. "I have often said that life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

Your problem is in caring what they call you.

Which side are we on, then?" "That's one o'those questions you try not to answer till you have to.

She wished she had better words. Ones that somehow bound up all he'd been to her. All the things felt but never said. All the holes he'd leave behind. But how can you fit all that in a bit of breath? 'By

But I suppose regrets at least prevent one from repeating the same mistakes.

I want a chance to do it all again. To do it… right.

I don't intend to rush at the grave, believe me." "Few do. The grave swallows us all regardless.

exceeded every expectation. It was built on a wide promontory that

There are few blessings without a curse hidden inside, nor curses without a whiff of blessing.

his brother used to tell him it was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back.

Command was a trick. You had to spread the illusion that you knew what you were doing as deep and as wide through your men as you could. Spread the illusion and hope for the best.

The people far prefer a leader who appears great, Bialoveld wrote, to one who is.

Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. 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.

But being an arsehole is crime and punishment both.