651 Quotes by Joe Abercrombie

Hard words are for fools and cowards. Calder might have been both, but Logen was neither. If you mean to kill, you’re better getting right to it than talking about it. Talk only makes the other man ready, and that’s the last thing you want. So Logen said nothing. Calder could take that for weakness if he pleased, and so much the better. Fights might find Logen depressingly often, but he was long, long past looking for them.

Every hero is someone’s villain.

And here it is. That horrible, beautiful, stretched out moment between stubbing your toe and feeling the hurt. How long do I have before the pain comes? How bad will it be when it does?

He tried to tell himself the dead are dead, but he knew Jenner had been right. Their ghosts stick in the minds of those that knew them, loved them, hated them. Those that killed them most of all.

Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us. Self-pity goes with selfishness, and there is nothing more to be deplored in a leader than that. Selfishness belongs to children, and to half-wits. A great leader puts others before himself. You would be surprised how acting so makes it easier to bear one’s own troubles. In order to act like a King, one need only treat everyone else like one.

A man is measured by his enemies. Worthy ones can be more missed than friends.

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

And is vengeance all you think of, every minute of every day, your only desire?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Hurting them? Killing them? Ending them?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘You want nothing for yourself?’ She paused. ‘What?’ ‘For yourself. What do you want?’ She stared at the old man suspiciously, but no reply came to her. Yulwei shook his head sadly. ‘It seems to me, Ferro Maljinn, that you are as much a slave as you ever were. Or ever could be.

Mercy and cowardice are the same,” she snapped out. “But you want their land, not their lives, no? Dead men can’t obey.