Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Reassuring lies had always been the glue that held his family together, after all.”

— Joe Abercrombie

452. “One of my greatest pleasures is a good cut of meat, and the bloodier the better. Just show them the flame, I always tell my cook. Just show it to them.”

— Joe Abercrombie

453. “Secrets, power. It’s all a metaphor.”

— Joe Abercrombie

454. “Perhaps the vengeance could wait, at least until he had a bigger blade to work with. You have to be realistic, after all.”

— Joe Abercrombie

455. “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

456. “What do we leave behind but things not done, not said, not finished? Empty clothes, empty rooms, empty spaces in the ones who knew us? Mistakes never made right and hopes rotted down to nothing?”

— Joe Abercrombie

457. “Some people, Orso supposed, can never forgive being forgiven.”

— Joe Abercrombie

458. “A dour-faced woman was working at a spinning wheel on a doorstep, and she frowned at Logen as he walked past with the unconscious apprentice over his shoulder. Logen smiled back at her. She was no beauty, that was sure, but it had been a very long time. The woman ducked into her house and kicked the door shut, leaving the wheel spinning. Logen sighed. The old magic was still there.”

— Joe Abercrombie

459. “Help with strange problems comes from strange people.”

— Joe Abercrombie

460. “Because the vast majority of men would far rather be told what to do than make their own choices. Obedience is easy.”

— Joe Abercrombie

461. “I apologise, your Highness. Murder can be a painful business.”

— Joe Abercrombie

462. “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.”

— Joe Abercrombie

463. “There was nothing to be gained by losing his temper. There was never anything to be gained by that.”

— Joe Abercrombie

464. “You must make of your quim a stone.”

— Joe Abercrombie

465. “Surprise makes brave men cowards, strong men weak, wise men fools.”

— Joe Abercrombie

466. “If anyone had asked him, Clover would’ve said there was less than no chance this’d be settled with talk. But you never realise how much hope you’re holding till it gets knifed and thrown off a roof.”

— Joe Abercrombie

467. “Always the ones quickest to insults got the thinnest skin, for some reason.”

— Joe Abercrombie

468. “Wine can keep a happy man happy, on occasion. A sad one it always makes worse.”

— Joe Abercrombie

469. “Every nation was rich in its own way, but poor in the same.”

— Joe Abercrombie

470. “When you build your life around only one thing, love only one person, dream only one dream, you risk losing everything at a stroke.”

— Joe Abercrombie

471. “Vanity, a loud voice and a loose relationship with the truth,” whispered Zuri. “All the qualities of a successful politician.”

— Joe Abercrombie

472. “You killed him all to bits, and robbed everyone who knew him, and cut all the good he might ever do out of the world.”

— Joe Abercrombie

473. “It was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back.”

— Joe Abercrombie

474. “There’s no curse like getting what you want.”

— Joe Abercrombie

475. “A good liar tells as much truth as he can. That way you never know what you’re getting.”

— Joe Abercrombie

476. “I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes.’ Cosca stretched his chin up and scratched at his scabby neck. ‘The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”

— Joe Abercrombie

477. “It’s a rare man who’s made better by a bit of power.”

— Joe Abercrombie

478. “Doubts and regrets, Isern. They’re the cost of casting a shadow.”

— Joe Abercrombie

479. “Winning teaches you nothing,” said Tunny. “You see what a man really is when he loses.”

— Joe Abercrombie

480. “He remembered other times and other campfires, when he had not been alone.”

— Joe Abercrombie

481. “It’s a newsbill. They tell you what’s happening.’ Orso thought about that. ‘Or they tell you what to think about what’s happening.’ He thought more. ‘Or the really successful ones just confirm what you already think about what’s happening.”

— Joe Abercrombie

482. “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

483. “Unity and respect, it seemed, were only for those who did as they were told.”

— Joe Abercrombie

484. “But maybe that’s what happens once the fighting stops, to a man who knows nothing but fighting. He fights himself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

485. “Patience is the parent of success.”

— Joe Abercrombie

486. “That was the trouble with pride, and courage, and all those clench-jawed virtues bards love to harp on. The more you have, the more likely you are to end up bottom in a pile of dead men.”

— Joe Abercrombie

487. “Knowledge isn’t always a gift, d’you see? Sometimes it’s better we be swaddled in the comforting darkness of ignorance.”

— Joe Abercrombie

488. “When it came to hatred, Brodd Tenways had a bottomless supply. He was one of those bastards who can’t even breathe quietly, ugly as incest and always delighted to push it in your face, leering from the shadows like the village pervert at a passing milkmaid.”

— Joe Abercrombie

489. “Rare rages render a man frightening. Common ones render him ridiculous.”

— Joe Abercrombie

490. “It can be a terrible curse for a man to get everything he ever dreamed of. If the shining prizes turn out somehow to be empty baubles, he is left without even his dreams for comfort. All the things that Jezal had thought he wanted – power, fame, the beautiful trappings of greatness – they were nothing but dust. All he wanted now was for things to be as they had been, before he got them. But there was no way back. Not ever.”

— Joe Abercrombie

491. “Absolutes are never to be trusted.”

— Joe Abercrombie

492. “Faith must be shaken from time to time, or it becomes rigid. An excuse for any outrage. I have come to believe that the righteous... should always have doubts.”

— Joe Abercrombie

493. “A throwaway conversation, a couple of bad jokes that half the gathering of five could not even have understood, and it was done. The battle was over. The war was over. Could they have had that conversation at the start, and would all those men–all these men–still be alive? Still have their arms, or legs? However she turned it around, she could not make it fit.”

— Joe Abercrombie

494. “But I never stop trying. Doing better next time, after all, that’s what life is.”

— Joe Abercrombie

495. “Votes? Elections? The voice of the common man? I hope you aired the suitable level of contempt. Power for the people? They don’t want it. They don’t understand it. What the hell would they do with it if they had it? The people are like children. They are children. They need someone to tell them what to do.”

— Joe Abercrombie

496. “They were well matched. Optimist and pessimist, dreamer and cynic. And what is love anyway, but finding someone who suits you? Someone who makes up for your shortcomings? Someone you can work with. Work on.”

— Joe Abercrombie

497. “If you build your boat from cheese, d’you see, you can’t wail at the heavens when it sinks, for cheese is known to be a poor material for boat-building.”

— Joe Abercrombie

498. “Maybe’s a game with no winners.”

— Joe Abercrombie

499. “Well-used memories, picked over and worn thin like a favourite shirt.”

— Joe Abercrombie

500. “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