Quotes from Joe Abercrombie

A man who's not content with what he's got, well, more than likely he won't be content with what he hasn't.

Heresy and progress often look much alike.

It is not how you die, but how you lived, that counts.

Unsheathe your swords!' He considered that. 'Or cheaper weapons! Let us ... do some good!

Don't deceive yourself. Everyone is guilty of something, and even the innocent can be a threat. Perhaps it takes small crimes to prevent bigger ones, Colonel West, but it's up to bigger men than us to decide.

You make yourself too hard, you make yourself brittle too. Crack once, crack all to pieces.

Then, once he had eaten, he would ask the spirits for guidance. Their guidance was pretty useless, but the company would be welcome.

A few glasses of wine can be the difference between finding a man a hilarious companion or an insufferable moron.

A King must win. The rest is dust.

She poured out a measure but Temple declined. 'Drink and I have had some long and painful conversations and found we simply can't agree.' 'Drink and I can't agree either.' She shrugged and tossed it down herself. 'But we keep on having the argument.

Any man can do what he likes. Right, Splitfoot?' 'Right, Chief.' 'Just as long as it's exactly what I fucking tell 'em to do.

Few indeed are those who get a choice. We do as we are told. We stand or fall beside those who were born near to us, who look as we do, who speak the same words, and all the while we know as little of the reasons why as does the dust we return to.

A minister stands for Father Peace, but a good one is no stranger to Mother War.

The man screamed, and screamed behind his mask, and the Bloody-Nine laughed, and twisted the blade. Logen might have pitied him, but Logen was far away and the Bloody-Nine had no more pity in him than the winter. Less even. He stabbed, and cut, and cut, and smiled, and the screams bubbled and died, and he let the corpse drop to the cold stones. His fingers were slick with blood and he wiped it on his clothes, on his arms, on his face—just as it should be.

Aye, well, we all play the cards we're dealt." "Some of us do. Some of us kill men with better cards and play theirs instead.

One act presses upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then we look up and find... this.

Would it help if I said I was very drunk? Brachio shook his head. - We all were. -Shitty childhood? -Mummy used to leave me in a cupboard. -Shitty adulthood? -Whose isn't?

Tomorrow came, and it was much like yesterday. Just more so.

There can be a greater power in words than in all the steel within the Circle of the World.

Funny how, whenever men talked about freedom, they never really meant for the women

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

Believe it or not, we all want what's best. The root o' the world's ills is that no one can agree on what it is.

If you wanted to see my cock that badly, you could just have asked.' 'No doubt a thing o' haunting beauty but i came for something else.

Never doubt another's choices, I say. You can't know his reasons.