Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Facing an enemy on the battlefield took courage, but you had your friends beside you. Standing alone against your friends, that was a different kind of courage.”

— Joe Abercrombie

252. “But I guess you learn to stop hoping, after a while. Life teaches you to expect the worst, eh?”

— Joe Abercrombie

253. “Magnificent,’ muttered Glokta, stretching out his aching back and squinting up, the pure white stone almost painful to look at in the afternoon glare. ‘Seeing this, one could almost believe in God.’ If one didn’t know better.”

— Joe Abercrombie

254. “Glorious victories make fine songs, Yarvi, but inglorious ones are no worse once the bards are done with them. Glorious defeats, meanwhile, are just defeats.”

— Joe Abercrombie

255. “He flowed up to the first wall, slid one leg over it, silent as a mouse. He lifted himself up, smooth as butter, keeping quiet, keeping low. His back foot caught on a set of loose stones, dragged them scraping with him. He grabbed at them, fumbled them, knocked over even more with his elbow and they clattered down loud around him. He stumbled onto his weak ankle, twisted it, squawked with pain, fell over and rolled through a patch of thistles.”

— Joe Abercrombie

256. “Men are brittle, I reckon. They don’t bend into new shapes. They get broken into them. Crushed into them.”

— Joe Abercrombie

257. “You keep your wine in a paper bag, you shouldn’t be too upset when it leaks.”

— Joe Abercrombie

258. “Never doubt another’s choices, I say. You can’t know his reasons.”

— Joe Abercrombie

259. “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.”

— Joe Abercrombie

260. “There are few ills a good cup of tea won’t help with.”

— Joe Abercrombie

261. “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

262. “You want a thing when you can’t have it. When you get it you suddenly sprout doubts. Then when you think you might lose it you find you need it worse than ever.”

— Joe Abercrombie

263. “If you clenched your teeth hard enough, and took enough strides, you could get anywhere. One painful, weary, freezing, guilty step at a time.”

— Joe Abercrombie

264. “You can’t become attached to things, not out here in the wild.”

— Joe Abercrombie

265. “Strange how, as long as the hardship lasts, we can stand it. As soon as the crisis is over, the strength all leeches away in an instant.”

— Joe Abercrombie

266. “A length of wood does not by itself make a man wise, or noble, or powerful, any more than a length of steel does. Power comes from the flesh, my boy, and from the heart, and from the head. From the head most of all.”

— Joe Abercrombie

267. “All things considered, and well against the run of luck, he reckoned he’d come out alright. Might be he’d lost an eye down here in Styria. Might be he was leaving no richer than when he’d stepped off the boat. But he was a better man, of that he’d no doubt. A wiser man. Used to be he was his own worst enemy. Now he was everyone else’s.”

— Joe Abercrombie

268. “A look of fury, a look of pain, a look of hatred you can trust. A smile can hide anything.”

— Joe Abercrombie

269. “Crowds rarely cheer too loudly for the defeated, no matter how hard they fought, how great their sacrifices, how long the odds. Maidens might wet themselves over cheap and worthless victories, but they don’t so much as blush for ‘I did my best.”

— Joe Abercrombie

270. “On the battlefield there are no rules.”

— Joe Abercrombie

271. “How you feeling Forley?’ asked the Dogman. ‘Bad, but you got to have fear to have courage.”

— Joe Abercrombie

272. “The birth of spring is perhaps not the best time to cross a mountain range,’ observed Longfoot under his breath. Bayaz looked sharply sideways. ‘Some would say the best time to cross an obstacle is when one finds oneself on the wrong side of it! Or do you suggest we wait for summer?”

— Joe Abercrombie

273. “He had discovered early in his military career that if one has an effective and experienced officer above, coupled with effective and experienced soldiers below, one need do, and know, nothing.”

— Joe Abercrombie

274. “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.”

— Joe Abercrombie

275. “Being in charge can seem like a thing iron-forged, but in the end it’s just an idea everyone agrees to.”

— Joe Abercrombie

276. “If you judge your thoughts worth hearing, pronounce them proudly, push them to every corner of the chamber, fill the hall with your hopes and desires and make every listener share them! If you are ashamed of your thoughts, better to leave a silence.”

— Joe Abercrombie

277. “Life’s a queue of small irritations with the Last Door at the end.”

— Joe Abercrombie

278. “They passed lands that had no name, where fens of mirror pools stretched into unknown distances, thousands of fragments of sky sprinkled across this bastard offspring of earth and sea, lonely birds calling out over the desolation, and Yarvi breathed deep the salt chill and longed for home.”

— Joe Abercrombie

279. “He was one of those men loves to be despised. That treats loathing like gold, to be clawed for and hoarded up. He hadn’t learned yet that hate’s the one thing never runs out.”

— Joe Abercrombie

280. “The people far prefer a leader who appears great, to one who is.”

— Joe Abercrombie

281. “I despise violence. It is the last tool of feeble minds.”

— Joe Abercrombie

282. “That’s what an idiot does when he gets angry. He destroys whatever’s nearest, even if it’s his own house!”

— Joe Abercrombie

283. “And Yarvi realized that Death does not bow to each person who passes her, does not sweep out her arm respectfully to show the way, speaks no profound words, unlocks no bolts. The key upon her chest is never needed, for the Last Door stands always open. She herds the dead through impatiently, needles of rank or fame or quality. She has an ever-lengthening queue to get through. A blind procession, inexhaustible.”

— Joe Abercrombie

284. “Enough to make a man believe in God,’ said Temple. ‘And that He’s somewhere else.”

— Joe Abercrombie

285. “But I’d rather not add to my regrets. The gods know I got a queue of the bastards.”

— Joe Abercrombie

286. “Are you drunk?’ ‘It’s the afternoon, isn’t it? I try always to be drunk by now. Once you start a job you should give it your best.”

— Joe Abercrombie

287. “Never took an easy path if he thought it was the wrong one. Never stepped back from a fight if he thought it had to be done.”

— Joe Abercrombie

288. “The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense. Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, that’s my advice.”

— Joe Abercrombie

289. “If you can’t make your enemies trust you, you can at least make them mistrust each other.”

— Joe Abercrombie

290. “Aye, but do they really kneel to him, or to the elf-weapons his guards carry?” “What matters is that they kneel.” “Are fear and respect really the same?” “Of course not,” said Yarvi, walking on and leaving more of his many guards to clear away the crowd. “Respect soon blows away in a storm. Fear has far deeper roots.” Teams of.”

— Joe Abercrombie

291. “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

292. “The truth is overrated.” Vick let the purse drop into his hand. “An actor should know that.”

— Joe Abercrombie

293. “And he realized then that he had not lost all those times in the training square because he lacked the skill, or the strength, or even a hand. He had lacked the will. And somewhere on the South Wind, somewhere in the trackless ice, somewhere in this ancient ruin, he had found it.”

— Joe Abercrombie

294. “Respect costs you nothing, and nothing gets a man killed quicker than confidence.”

— Joe Abercrombie

295. “Aliz sighed. “War is terrible, isn’t it?” “It blights the landscape, throttles commerce and industry, kills the innocent and rewards the guilty, thrusts honest men into poverty and lines the pockets of profiteers, and in the end produces nothing but corpses, monuments and tall tales.”

— Joe Abercrombie

296. “I don’t do sober any more. Sober hurts.”

— Joe Abercrombie

297. “A name to fill strong men with fear or courage, depending on which side they stand.”

— Joe Abercrombie

298. “He’s living in a dream! Pandered to, and coddled, and utterly spoiled his whole life! That boy and the real world are entire strangers to one another!”

— Joe Abercrombie

299. “Every man who’s worth a damn feels fear. It’s the use you make of it that counts.”

— Joe Abercrombie

300. “Knowledge is so often the antidote to fear. But not here. Not now.”

— Joe Abercrombie