Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

Funny," said the Nail, back in his floppy slouch already. "Barbs don't sting so much from a man you can slap whenever you please.

Easy, now, and listen to me. It hurts, yes. Seems like more than you can take, but it isn't. You think you're going to die, but you won't. Listen to me, because I've been there, and I know. Each minute. Each hour. Each day, it gets better.

I suppose some men just love the sound of their own voices.

Ninefingers had been so very fond of saying: it was better to do it, than to live with the fear of it. He

Once your hands get bloody it ain't so easy to get 'em clean.

Savine had once felt nowhere more at home than here, flitting from one opportunity to another, hopes and dreams left wrecked in her wake. Now all she wanted was to slit the laces of her corset and sag down with her children, slap the stopper from the decanter and never put it back.

but it's better to do it—' 'Than to live with the fear of it.

Sometimes,' he murmured, 'the only way to improve something is to destroy it, so it can be rebuilt better. Sometimes, to change the world, we must first burn it down.

They're in there? Morveer and his little echo?

A man sleeps through most of his life, even when awake. You get so little time, yet still you spend it utterly oblivious. Angry, frustrated, fixated on meaningless nothings. That drawer does not close flush with the front of my desk. What cards does my opponent hold, and how much money can I win from him? I wish I were taller. What will I have for dinner, for I am not fond of parsnips?

You want to paint this?' 'Future generations might never believe it happened.' She blew some yellow hair out of her face with a smoky breath and went back to sketching, charcoal hissing on paper. 'Then it might happen again.

Except that they are people and people are never to be trusted,' said Nothing.

They don't see that you can't have a future without a past.

She found she had a great deal less courage altogether than she had smugly supposed while blackmailing investors, or choosing a wig, or pronouncing social death sentences in the salons of Adua. She had always reckoned herself such a gambler. No more audacious woman in the Union. Now she realised the games had always been rigged in her favour. She never had to gamble with her life before, and the stakes had risen suddenly far too high for her taste.

Least I won't have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?

Help was for the weak, and the weak die, or are made slaves. Never hope for help and you can never be disappointed when it does not come.

You can never have too many knives." "No? What if you fall in a river and can't swim for all that iron?

Los enemigos son el precio del éxito

Northmen kept him close. He liked to think he was looked on as some noble mixture of bodyguard, advisor and mentor. In truth, the role probably tended more towards jester. But what can you do but play the role you're given?

She had always reckoned herself such a gambler. No more audacious woman in the Union. Now she realised the games had always been rigged in her favour. She never had to gamble with her life before, and the stakes had risen suddenly far too high for her taste.

He never had any choices.

You must be quicker to strike and quicker when you do. You must be tougher and cleverer, you must always look to attack, and you must fight without honour, without conscience, without pity.

Money is a different thing to every man, Bialoveld wrote, but always a good thing.

We tell the odd fond story of the good men. The straight edges. Your Rudd Threetrees, your Dogmen. But it's the butchers men love to sing of. The burners and the blood-spillers. Your Cracknut Whirruns and your Black Dows. Your Bloody-Nines. Men don't dream of doing the right thing, but of ripping what they want from the world with their strength and their will.