The Trouble with Peace Quotes

“Winning teaches you nothing,” said Tunny. “You see what a man really is when he loses.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“Tomorrow came, and it was much like yesterday. Just more so.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“life is the misery we endure between disappointments.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“We’re all like children, Rikke. The older you get, the more you realise the grown-ups won’t suddenly walk in and set things right. You want things right, you have to put ’em right yourself.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“Hoping for a thing often seems the best way o’ bringing on the opposite”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“Everyone should forgive themselves, Vick.” He gave her wrist another squeeze then let her go, looking out towards the lake again. “After all… no one else will.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“You would’ve thought the more pain you suffered, the more you’d get used to it, but it was the other way around.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“Enemies are like furniture, aren't they? Better chosen for oneself than inherited.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“But then it’s difficult, isn’t it, to make a passionate argument for what you already have? So boring. Whereas the delightful alternative? A bouquet of promises! A sackful of dreams! A glorious ship of fantasies, undamaged by collision with actually getting anything done.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“I find reputations rarely fit people all that well. What are they, after all, but costumes we put on to disguise ourselves?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“A man is measured by his enemies. Worthy ones can be more missed than friends.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“Surprise makes brave men cowards, strong men weak, wise men fools.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“You can’t change the fact the world’s full of arseholes. You can only change how you deal with them.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“Who says there even is a real Shenkt? People like things that are simple. Black and white. Good and evil. They want to make a choice and tell themselves they were right. But as His Eminence is fond of saying, the real world is painted in greys. The truth is complicated, full of mixed emotions and blurred outcomes and each-way bets. The truth … is a hard sell.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“I won’t. But … pamphlets?’ ‘Absolutely.’ ‘Etchings?’ ‘The language of the heart.’ ‘Do you really think people are that stupid?’ ‘Darling.’ She leaned closer, and kissed him gently, and touched him lightly on the tip of his nose with her fingertip. ‘People are far more stupid than that.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“The ones you like straight away rarely turn out to be your favourites.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“Prefer to eat the eggs I’ve got, my king, rather’n the ones still up in the tree.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“Along with the constant pain was the constant need to pretend you weren’t in pain at all, as though the worst thing about your agony was that it might put other people out.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“Years, back, when they first made him a sergeant, he’d imagined the officers much have all the answers. When he was given his commission, he’d imagined the generals must have all the answers. When King Orso made him a general, he’d imagined the Closed counsel bust have all the answers. Now, as a lord marshal, he finally knew it for an absolute fact. No one had the answers. Worse. There weren’t any.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“Your Majesty, we are not here to set right all the world’s wrongs.” Orso stared back at him. “What are we here for, then?” Bayaz neither smiled nor frowned. “To ensure that we benefit from them.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“You are a king. You have no business talking about the right thing.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“The dead save me from the fucking young.’ ‘No getting away from ’em, sadly,’ muttered Clover. ‘The older you get, the more of ’em there are.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“have often said that life is the misery we endure between disappointments.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“A bank with a reputation for mercy is like a whore with a reputation for chastity – one fears they won’t get the job done.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“But there’s so much to feel sorry for in the world. Can’t waste too much on folk who act like pricks.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“The one on the left, a sour-looking old bastard with a scar through his short grey hair, lifted his head to sneer up at her. “Fuck yourselves, you mad bitches.”
Rikke raised her brows at Corleth. Corleth raised hers back. “Fuck yourselves, he says.”
“I heard him,” said Rikke. “Guess there might be time for that later. Just a celebratory finger or two. But right now, I’m a little busy stealing your city.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“He'd grown himself a little bit of a beard, just under his mouth, while he shaved the rest. Clover couldn't understand it. Grow it or don't, but why leave bits? It was like leaving your wife half-fucked.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“So this is all about appeareances?` murmured Vick.
'Being king IS all about appeareances,' said Orso. 'An endless perfomance with no chance for an encore and for damn sure no applause.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble with Peace

“Maybe’s a game with no winners.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace

“Nothing is ever fixed. From the moment it is born, from the moment it is built, everything is always dying, decaying, drifting into chaos.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Trouble With Peace