Top 58 Quotes & Sayings by Joe Abercrombie

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?

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

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

I span the entire geek spectrum.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hard words are for fools and cowards.

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

Those with the least always lose the most in war.

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

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.

The man is a monster. The worst I have ever seen, in fact, since I last looked in the mirror. The truth? I am rotting too. I am buried alive, and already rotting. If I was not such a coward I would kill myself, but I am, and so I must content myself with killing others in the hope that one day, if I can only wade deep enough in blood, I will come out clean.

Fearlessness is a fool's boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that's the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who's worth a damn feels fear. It's the use you make of it that counts.

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.

That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It's those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit, that prosper.

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

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

Have a smile for breakfast, you'll be shitting joy by lunch.

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.

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

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

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

All your life spent getting ready for the next thing. I climbed a lot of hills now. I crossed a lot of rivers. Crossed the sea even, left everything I knew and came to Styria. But there I was, waiting for me at the docks when I got off the boat, same man, same life. Next valley ain't no different from this one. No better anyway. Reckon I've learned ... just to stick in the place I'm at. Just to be the man I am.

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

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

One act presses upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then we look up and find... this.

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

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.

'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.

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.

Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.

More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.

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.

Only it’s just the same. In fact, do you know, because of all that pressure, and worry, and fear, it’s worse. There aren’t many men who think clearest when the stakes are highest. So people are even stupider in a war than the rest of the time. Thinking about how they’ll dodge the blame, or grab the glory, or save their skins, rather than about what will actually work There’s no job that forgives stupidity more than soldiering. No job that encourages it more.

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?

History is littered with dead good men

Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.

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

I think the further away you get from completing a book, the more responses you see to it from readers, the more your own tastes and opinions shift and the more you start to see things you could have written differently in the detail, or done differently on the broader scale of plot and character.

Sometimes men change for the better. Sometimes men change for the worse. And often, very often, given time and opportunity . . .’ He waved his flask around for a moment, then shrugged. ‘They change back.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

I got into reading a lot of noir and a lot of thrillers as well, and I really admired the plotting about those and the way that they can surprise you. And obviously to surprise people and to have twists in the tale, you have to plan quite carefully.

Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

Chose? If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.

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

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.

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

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

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