Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

It's not easy is it? Being a great man's son. You'd thought that would come with all kinds of advantages - with borrowed admiration, and respect. But it's only as easy as it is for the seeds of a great tree, trying to grow in its choking shadow. Not many make it to the sunlight for themselves.

It can be a terrible curse for a man to get everything he ever dreamed of. If the shining prizes turn out somehow to be empty baubles, he is left without even his dreams for comfort.

You carry on. That's what he'd always done. That's the task that comes with surviving, whether you deserve to live or not. You remember the dead as best you can. You say some words for them. Then you carry on, and you hope for better.

Lorsen shook his head in amazement. 'You truly are disgusting.' 'I would be the last to disagree, but you fail to see that you are worse. No man capable of greater evil than the one who thinks himself in the right. No purpose more evil than the higher purpose. I freely admit I am a villain. That's why you hired me. But I am no hypocrite.

A man doesn't put on a mask unless he's got some dark work in mind.

The food of fear is ignorance, Mother Gundring used to say. The death of fear is knowledge. When you study a race of men you find they are just men like any others.

say one thing for Logen Ninefinger, say he's a cunt.

I never saw men act with such ignorance, violence and self-serving malice as when energised by a just cause.

Why do big men tend to have such little brains? Perhaps they get by on brawn too often, and their minds dry up like plums in the sun.

Damn, he was bored. It was a fact, he was only now beginning to realise, that the conversation of the drunk is only interesting to the drunk. A few glasses on wine can be the difference between finding a man a hilarious companion or an insufferable moron.

What poet was it who wrote there's no pain worse than the pain of a broken heart? Sentimental shit. He should have spent more time in the Emporer's prisons.

The skies make no special dispensation for Magi, boy, they piss on everyone the same.

Well, everyone lies. The difference between a hero and a villain is whether anyone believes him.

It was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back.

Pain is the best schoolmaster, as you will soon discover.

To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike.

loyalty's a dangerous foundation. Tends to wash away in a storm. Self-interest stands in any weather.

There's no changing yesterday. Only tomorrow.

Madmen and fools feel no fear. Heroes fear and face the danger anyway.

Government is tyranny. At its best it is dressed in pretty colours.

All the great heroes of old, you know - the great kings, the great generals - they all faced adversity from time to time." Jezal looked up. He had almost forgotten that Bayaz was there. "Suffering is what gives a man strength, my boy, just as the steel most hammered turns out the hardest.

But some things have to be done. It's better to do them, than to live with the fear of them.

You cannot expect all the heroes to survive a good song

I always thought of being together as the end of the work. Turns out it's where the work starts.