Top 100 Abercrombie's Quotes
#1. As in all Abercrombie's books, friends turn out to be enemies, enemies turn out to be friends; the line between good and evil is murky indeed; and nothing goes quite as we expect. With eye-popping plot twists and rollicking good action, Half a King is definitely a full adventure.
Rick Riordan
#2. 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
#3. Mercy and weakness are the same thing in war, and there's no prize for nice behavior.
Joe Abercrombie
#4. There's no style of contempt like the stuff one kind of savage has for another,
Joe Abercrombie
#5. Why the mad hair, girl?"
"Because damn you," growled Thorn, "that's why.
Joe Abercrombie
#6. A man doesn't put on a mask unless he's got some dark work in mind.
Joe Abercrombie
#7. 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?
Joe Abercrombie
#8. A whore with a veil is mysterious. God's ways appear to be ... insane.
Joe Abercrombie
#9. Remember, though, that you are the king's observer, not the king's champion.
Joe Abercrombie
#10. If life has taught me one thing, it's that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.
Joe Abercrombie
#11. Straining and straining, getting nowhere, but unable to stop pushing in case the rock should fall and crush him. Meanwhile, arrogant bastards who were in just the same danger lazed on the slopes beside him saying, 'Well, it's not my rock.
Joe Abercrombie
#13. So as soon as the land was worth something and there was money in the bank, all of a sudden everybody got interested in non-discrimination, in who's really going to administer this stuff.
Neil Abercrombie
#14. 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
#16. Didn't seem likely, but what's the point of likely fantasies?
Joe Abercrombie
#17. 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.
Joe Abercrombie
#18. There's always a worse case than your worst case, and more often than not, it happens.
Joe Abercrombie
#19. The memories of our glories fade, and rot away into half-arsed anecdotes, thin and unconvincing as some other bastard's lies. The failures, the disappointments, the regrets, they stay raw as the moments they happened.
Joe Abercrombie
#20. You carry on. That's what he'd always done. That's the task that comes with surviving, whether you deserve to live or not. You remember the dead as best you can. You say some words for them. Then you carry on, and you hope for better.
Joe Abercrombie
#21. Being in charge can seem like a thing iron-forged, but in the end it's just an idea everyone agrees to.
Joe Abercrombie
#22. So there's always been this clash between what is the public good - that which belongs to all of us in common - and what can be exploited for a private interest.
Neil Abercrombie
#23. I've been on jobs like that before, everyone stuck on the money not the work, watching their backs every minute. Bad for your health and your business. We'll do this civilised, or not at all. What do you say?
"I say civilised," said Shenkt. "For pity's sake, let's kill like honest men.
Joe Abercrombie
#24. But you love to play the good man, don't you? Do you know what's worse than a villain? A villain who thinks he's a hero. A man like that, there's nothing he won't do and he'll always find himself an excuse.
Joe Abercrombie
#25. We all got our reasons ... good men and bad men. It's all a matter of where you stand.
Joe Abercrombie
#26. The older you get, the more swiftly the years pass. It's easy to forget how quickly people die.
Joe Abercrombie
#27. Loyalty's a dangerous foundation. Tends to wash away in a storm. Self-interest stands in any weather.
Joe Abercrombie
#29. Bayaz chuckled. "The Bloody-Nine, scared of shadows? I'd never have believed it." "Every shadow's cast by something," growled the Northman,
Joe Abercrombie
#30. 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
#31. When the best you can get from your wife's father is that he won't help to kill you, it doesn't take a clever man to see you're in shit to your chin.
Joe Abercrombie
#32. All heroes' news, like something from the songs, but there's nothing like others' successes to make your own failures sting the worse.
Joe Abercrombie
#33. Have you no pity?' Glokta could only shrug. 'I did have. As a boy I was soft-hearted beyond the point of foolishness. I swear, I would cry at a fly caught in a spider's web.' He grimaced at a brutal spasm through his leg as he turned for the door. 'Constant pain has cured me of that.
Joe Abercrombie
#34. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he's a lover.
Joe Abercrombie
#35. They appear somewhat unreliable," he murmured.
"Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there's not a man of them I wouldn't trust my mother to."
"Are you sure?"
"She's been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?
Joe Abercrombie
#36. Summers past love company, seems every time you turn around there's more o' the bastards at your back.
Joe Abercrombie
#37. But you can't truly hate a man without loving him first, and there's always a trace of that love left over.
Joe Abercrombie
#38. There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny.
Lascelles Abercrombie
#40. There's no need to rush, Arch Lector. That's the trouble with good legs, you tend to run around too much. If you have trouble moving, on the other hand, you don't move until you damn well know it's time.
Joe Abercrombie
#43. What's the difference? Fill a hundred pits with dead Northmen, congratulations, have a parade! Kill one man in the same uniform as you? A crime. A murder. Worse than despicable. Are we not all men? All blood and bone and dreams?
Joe Abercrombie
#44. News spoils quick, friend, like milk.' 'I say it gets better if carefully kept, like wine.' 'I'm glad you like the vintage, but I ain't buying yesterday's news.
Joe Abercrombie
#45. Maybe her father hadn't been quite the hero she always reckoned him. Maybe her mother wasn't quite the villain either. Maybe no one's all one or all the other.
Joe Abercrombie
#46. Luck is a woman. She's drawn to those that least deserve her.
Joe Abercrombie
#47. 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.
Joe Abercrombie
#48. Walk in God's footsteps, Ferro Maljinn." "Huh. They have no God here." "Say rather that they have many." "Many?" "Had you not noticed? Here, each man worships himself.
Joe Abercrombie
#49. Just keep your mouth shut and smile. That's always good advice.' Jezal
Joe Abercrombie
#50. That's the problem with mistakes. You can make'em in an instant. Years upon years spent tiptoeing about like a fool, then you take your eye away for a moment and ... Bang.
Joe Abercrombie
#51. Something dug into the Bloody-Nine's back, but there was no pain. It was a sign. A message in a secret tongue, that only he could understand. It told him where the next dead man was standing.
Joe Abercrombie
#52. Death waits for us all. Nothing's forever. Life's about making the best of what you find along the way. 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.
Joe Abercrombie
#53. 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.
Joe Abercrombie
#54. If you could kill a man by frowning at his back, the Breaker of Swords would have fallen bloody through the Last Door that day, but a frown is no blade, and Thorn's hatred cut no one but her.
Joe Abercrombie
#55. It's hard to stay calm when you're terrified, helpless, alone, at the mercy of men with no mercy at all.
Joe Abercrombie
#56. He could do anything and it would be right, for he had made himself a willing puppet of God's purpose and in so doing freed himself. He alone free, surrounded by slaves.
Joe Abercrombie
#57. As Eric Dolphy said 'Once you play the music, it's in the air. It's gone'. And that's true. But when you record it, it comes back to haunt you sometimes.
John Abercrombie
#58. It always catches people by surprise, the moment of their death, even when they should see it coming. They always think they're special, somehow expect a reprieve. But no one's special.
Joe Abercrombie
#59. I used to love to hear stories of that man's exploits! One of my heroes, when I was young. Riding round the enemy, harassing his lines of communication, falling on the baggage train and whatnot.
The Prince's riding crop rode around, harassed, and fell on imaginary baggage in the air before him.
Joe Abercrombie
#60. 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
#61. Half a King is my favorite book by Joe Abercrombie so far, and that's saying something.
Patrick Rothfuss
#62. He's really dead?"
Benna blew out his cheeks. "Well, his head's off, and spiked above the gates, so unless you know one hell of a physician ...
Joe Abercrombie
#63. 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
#64. That's what an idiot does when he gets angry. He destroys whatever's nearest, even if it's his own house!
Joe Abercrombie
#65. There's no disappointment like getting what you've always wanted ...
Joe Abercrombie
#66. Some men you stick to right off. But it's those that take time to stick that stick longest.
Joe Abercrombie
#67. Strange, that however tough one's skin becomes in later life, the wounds of youth never close. Shenkt
Joe Abercrombie
#68. You can weep over each other's hidden nobility when we're safe!
Joe Abercrombie
#69. A man with a missing eye after a man with a missing finger. There's a song in there somewhere, I reckon.
Joe Abercrombie
#70. That's the trouble with running. Wherever you run to, that's where you are.
Joe Abercrombie
#71. I'm a fucking coward."
"Maybe." Craw jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Whirrun's corpse. "There's a hero. Tell me who's better off.
Joe Abercrombie
#72. 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
#73. Give Yarvi the knife since he has just one hand to hold it. One hand, perhaps, but the blood of kings in his veins!"
"It's keeping it there that worries me," said Yarvi under his breath.
Joe Abercrombie
#74. It's what you give out that makes a man, not what you get back.
Joe Abercrombie
#75. She shrugged. "I fell. I'm a clumsy fool." "I know how you feel. I'm such a fool I knocked half my teeth out and hacked my leg to useless pulp. Look at me now, a cripple. It's amazing where a little foolishness can take you, if it goes unchecked.
Joe Abercrombie
#76. The ground must be a general's best friend, or it becomes his worst enemy.
Joe Abercrombie
#77. The stench of self-satisfaction is becoming quite suffocating. If you mean to kill me, blast me to a cinder now and let's be done,
Joe Abercrombie
#78. They say it's men with nothing to lose you should fear. But it's them who fear most.
Joe Abercrombie
#79. A good portion of the airport is on ceded lands, and lease money was paid for that. So the state's collecting lease money because all of a sudden 'worthless' land now has an airport on it.
Neil Abercrombie
#80. Well, that's the end of that, I reckon. You know what, Furious?" And he grinned sideways at West. "I'm getting to like you, boy.
Joe Abercrombie
#81. Never doubt another's choices, I say. You can't know his reasons.
Joe Abercrombie
#82. What poet was it who wrote there's no pain worse than the pain of a broken heart? Sentimental shit. He should have spent more time in the Emporer's prisons.
Joe Abercrombie
#83. One need not love one's enemy, or even fear him, to desire peace. One need only love oneself.
Joe Abercrombie
#84. I just think TV is becoming more and more interesting in a way. Films are more and more derivative, you know, whether it's 'Transformers 2' or 'Shrek 5', or it's yet another iteration of another kind of clone of something else. It's a bit depressing in a way.
Joe Abercrombie
#85. I always thought of being together as the end of the work. Turns out it's where the work starts.
Joe Abercrombie
#86. He was not sure what he had been expecting. Outstanding beauty, or stunning grace, or something that struck him instantly to the heart. But Ankran's family were an ordinary-looking pair. Most people are, of course, to those that don't know them.
Joe Abercrombie
#87. He'd done the right thing. Maybe. Or maybe there's no such thing.
Joe Abercrombie
#88. Logen still remembered the first time he had to leave someone behind, remembered it like it was yesterday. Strange how the boy's name had gone but the face was with him still.
Joe Abercrombie
#89. 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.
Joe Abercrombie
#90. It's an easy thing to make a man a carcass. He knew a thousand ways to do it. But once you've done it, there's no going back. One minute he's a man, all full up with hopes, and thoughts, and dreams. A man with friends, and family, and a place where he's from. Next minute he's mud.
Joe Abercrombie
#91. Could the motive be nothing more than simple self-preservation? When you lose the instinct yourself, it's hard to remember how powerful it is for everyone else. He felt himself starting to smile.
Joe Abercrombie
#92. She surely can cook a fight from the most peaceful ingredients. But nothing worth doing is easy. I love her in spite of it. I love her because of it. I love her." And his face broke out in that grin again. "Every day's a new adventure, that's for sure.
Joe Abercrombie
#93. 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
#94. Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.
Joe Abercrombie
#96. Courage can come fro many places, and be made of many things, and yesterday's coward can become tomorrow's hero in an instant if the time is right.
Joe Abercrombie
#97. We all have luck, good and bad. It's how you meet it that matters
Joe Abercrombie
#98. You keep your guard too low, I am afraid. You are full of passion, but passion without discipline is no more than a child's tantrum.
Joe Abercrombie
#99. Monica's eyes were fierce and fiery, but she didn't move, and after a second she turned and ran up the steps to the second floor, where her formally dressed friends were huddled like the cast of Survivor: Abercrombie & Fitch Island.
Rachel Caine
#100. A good leader can't dwell on the choices he's made, Threetrees used to tell him, and a good leader can't help dwelling on 'em.
Joe Abercrombie
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