Joe Abercrombie Quotes

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

~ Joe Abercrombie

It's a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you are lying on your death bead, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes.

~ Joe Abercrombie

The Inquisitor waited for silence. Do you believe in anything?Not if I can help it. Belief alone is nothing to be proud of, Inquisitor. Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Trust is like glass. Lovely, but only a fool rests lots of weight on it.

~ Joe Abercrombie

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

~ Joe Abercrombie

It's hard to be done a favor by a man you hate. It's hard to hate him so much afterwards. Losing an enemy can be worse than losing a friend, if you've had him for long enough.

~ Joe Abercrombie

The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense.

~ Joe Abercrombie

You can always make enemies of your friends,' said Sumael. 'Making friends of your enemies is harder labor.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their 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.

~ Joe Abercrombie

I apologise, your Highness. Murder can be a painful business.

~ Joe Abercrombie

But you know what they say - old milk turns sour but old scores just get sweeter.

~ Joe Abercrombie

You stick a bunch of drunken murderers together, ain't long before some turn to thieving, then to lying, then to bad language, and pretty soon to sobriety, raising families and making an honest living.

~ Joe Abercrombie

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.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Bravery is the dead man’s virtue.

~ Joe Abercrombie

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

~ Joe Abercrombie

The Bloody-Nine opened his mouth, and shrieked out all of his bottomless love and his endless hate in one long wail.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Inquisitor Lorsen's thin lip curled. There is truly nothing in you of what separates man from animal, is there? You are bereft of conscience. An utter absence of morality. You have no principle beyond the selfish.Cosca's face hardened as he leaned forwards. Perhaps when you have faced as many disappointments and suffered as many betrayals as I, you will see it - there is no principle beyond the selfish, Inquisitor, and men are animals. Conscience is a burden we choose to bear. Morality is the lie we tell ourselves to make its bearing easier. There have been many times in my life when I have wished it was not so. But it is so.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Hurray', shouted Glokta. 'Porridge again!'He looked over at the motionless Practical. 'Porridge and honey, better than money, everything's funny, with porridge and honey!

~ Joe Abercrombie

When was it exactly that I became... this? By small degrees, I suppose. One act presses hard 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 one day we look up and fine we are... this.

~ Joe Abercrombie

When was it exactly that I became... this? By small degrees, I suppose. Once act presses hard 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 one day we look up and fine we are... this.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Sometimes it doesn't matter too much what choice you make, as long as you make it quick and stick to it.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Have a smile for breakfast, you'll be shitting joy by lunch.

~ Joe Abercrombie

You have to be grateful for the small things, when any minute might be your last.

~ Joe Abercrombie

The Forest that had been about her all her life, certain as a mountain, was made ashes. The high gable that had stood for two hundred years fallen in ruin. Throvenland was torn apart like smoke on the wind. Nowhere would be safe, ever again.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.

~ Joe Abercrombie

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.

~ Joe Abercrombie

When you're in hell, only a devil can point the way out.

~ Joe Abercrombie

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.

~ Joe Abercrombie

One day you're something, so promising and full o' dares, so big the world's too small a place to hold you. Then, 'fore you know it, you're old, and you realise all them things you had in mind you'll never get to. All them doors you felt too big to fit through have already shut. Only one left open and it leads to nothing but nothing.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Sometimes, when someone lives in danger for too long, the only time they feel alive is when death's breathing on their shoulder.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Vengeance is a way of clinging to what we have lost. A wedge in the Last Door, and through the crack we can still glimpse the faces of the dead. We strain towards it with all our being, break every rule to have it, but when we clutch it, there is nothing there. Only grief.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Empathy? What’s that?” Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. “It’s a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.

~ Joe Abercrombie

So the fox killed his brother, the wolf. (Mother Scaer)

~ Joe Abercrombie

You want to be merciful. To stand in the light. I understand it. I admire it. But, my queen...Only the victors can be merciful.

~ Joe Abercrombie

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

~ Joe Abercrombie

The best steel doesn't always shine the brightest.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Some men you stick to right off. But it's those that take time to stick that stick longest.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.

~ Joe Abercrombie

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.

~ Joe Abercrombie