Joe Abercrombie Quotes

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

I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn to stop making them.

It is easy to forget how much you have, when your eyes are always fixed on what you have not.

Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.

Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.

You should laugh every moment you live, for you'll find it decidedly difficult afterwards.

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.

Armour... is part of a state of mind... in which you admit the possibility... of being hit.

If life has taught me one thing, it's that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.

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.

Names turned over by time, like the plough turning the soil. Bringing up the new while the old were buried in the mud.

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

A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.

Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.

There was no such thing as luck. Luck was a word idiots used to explain the consequences of their own rashness, and selfishness, and stupidity. More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.

People love to see death. It reminds them that however mean, however low, however horrible their lives become… at least they have one.

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

Good steel bends, but never breaks. Good steel stays always sharp and ready. Good steel feels no pain, no pity, and above all, no remorse

Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.

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?

The fool strikes. The wise man smiles, and watches, and learns. Then strikes.

You don’t pick your family, you take what you’re given and you make the best of it.

Luck is a woman. She's drawn to those that least deserve her.

The wise wait for their moment, but never let it pass.

Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipe. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency.

Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.

As a writer, you have to first of all write what you want to. Listen to advice, by all means, but don't get bogged down in it.

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.

Sometimes when I'm really enjoying a book, I'll read a sentence or paragraph and just think - how can someone's head be wired in such a way that they'd come up with that?

It's hard to stay calm when you're terrified, helpless, alone, at the mercy of men with no mercy at all.

Hard words are for fools and cowards.

'The Blade Itself' was my first book. Probably I should've tried a few short stories first, but for some reason I decided to begin with Everest.

History is littered with dead good men

Love is a fine cushion to rest upon, but only hate can make you a better person.

Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

But you can't truly hate a man without loving him first, and there's always a trace of that love left over.

The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick.

Those with the least always lose the most in war.

A whole new thing. A forging of the humble parts of bread and cheese into a greater whole. I call it...a cheese-trap.

I span the entire geek spectrum.

Fools boast of what they will do. Heroes do it.

Savor the little moments, son, that's my advice. They're what life is. All the little things that happen while you're waiting for something else.

More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.

A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success.

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

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

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

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.

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

it was like staring at a whitewashed wall, but without all the emotion