Joe Abercrombie > Quotes

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“Has it ever occured to you, Master Ninefingers, that a sword is different from other weapons? Axes and maces and so forth are lethal enough, but they hang on the belt like dumb brutes. But a sword...a sword has a voice.
Sheathed it has little to say, to be sure, but you need only put your hand on the hilt and it begins to whisper in your enemy's ear. A gentle word. A word of caution. Do you hear it?
Now, compare it to the sword half drawn. It speaks louder, does it not? It hisses a dire threat. It makes a deadly promise. Do you hear it?
Now compare it to the sword full drawn. It shouts now, does it not? It screams defiance! It bellows a challenge! Do you hear it?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“You have to realistic about these things.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

“Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“You were a hero round these parts. That's what they call you when you kill so many people the word murderer falls short.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“You should laugh every moment you live, for you'll find it decidedly difficult afterwards.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“I’ve fought in three campaigns,” he began. “In seven pitched battles. In countless raids and skirmishes and desperate defences, and bloody actions of every kind. I’ve fought in the driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I’ve been fighting all my life, one enemy or another, one friend or another. I’ve known little else. I’ve seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothing at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killing her husband, and I threw her down a well. And that’s far from the worst of it. Life used to be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper.

“I’ve fought ten single combats and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons. I’ve been ruthless, and brutal, and a coward. I’ve stabbed men in the back, burned them, drowned them, crushed them with rocks, killed them asleep, unarmed, or running away. I’ve run away myself more than once. I’ve pissed myself with fear. I’ve begged for my life. I’ve been wounded, often, and badly, and screamed and cried like a baby whose mother took her tit away. I’ve no doubt the world would be a better place if I’d been killed years ago, but I haven’t been, and I don’t know why.”

He looked down at his hands, pink and clean on the stone. “There are few men with more blood on their hands than me. None, that I know of. The Bloody-Nine they call me, my enemies, and there’s a lot of ’em. Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nothing but more blood. It follows me now, always, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never be free of it. I should never be free of it. I’ve earned it. I’ve deserved it. I’ve sought it out. Such is my punishment.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“Honour, eh? What the hell is that anyway? Every man thinks it's something different. You can't drink it. You can't fuck it. The more of it you have the less good it does you, and if you've got none at all you don't miss it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Every man has his excuses, and the more vile the man becomes, the more touching the story has to be. What is my story now, I wonder?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“Sometimes it doesn't matter too much what choice you make, as long as you make it quick and stick to it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Well. What can we do, except try to do better?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“I've made peace with myself.
Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win.
Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“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, Red Country

“Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“People love to see death. It reminds them that however mean, however low, however horrible their lives become… at least they have one.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“But that was civilisation, so far as Logen could tell. People with nothing better to do, dreaming up ways to make easy things difficult.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“You can never have too many knives, his father had told him. Unless they're pointed at you, and by people who don't like you much. ”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“When you're in hell, only a devil can point the way out.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half a King

“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, Last Argument of Kings

“Those with the least always lose the most in war.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. Still, the struggle itself is worthwhile. Knowledge is the root of power, after all.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“You have to learn to love the small things in life, like a hot bath. You have to love the small things, when you have nothing else.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“That was the difference between a hero and a villain, a soldier and a murderer, a victory and a crime. Which side of a river you called home.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold