Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “The thing about history is you don’t know what the right side is till long afterwards, and by then it hardly matters.” “That’s the sort o’ thing you hear from folk who know they’re on the wrong side.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

305. “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

306. “Gold and silver is everything to everyone. Some of us have enough of it to pretend otherwise.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

308. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

310. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

312. “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.”

— Joe Abercrombie

313. “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

314. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

316. “Isern squelched up the bank with Rikke’s dripping trousers. ‘Clean as new snow! Your only stench now shall be of youth and disappointment.”

— Joe Abercrombie

317. “Strange, to lock men up for thieving when the whole army lived on robbery. To dangle men for murder when they were all at the business of killing. What makes a crime in a time when men take what they please from who they please?”

— Joe Abercrombie

318. “She was not a woman to be deterred by hatred: not from her workers, not from her rivals, not from the men she bullied, bribed or blackmailed to get her way. It is when they truly hate you, after all, that you know you have won. So she met the seething dislike with effortless superiority, paraded past with her shoulders back and chin high. If she was to be cast as the villain, so be it. They were always the most interesting characters anyway.”

— Joe Abercrombie

319. “Winning made people friendly. Winning too much made them nervous.”

— Joe Abercrombie

320. “Laughing with a man was a good step forward. First comes the laughter, then the respect, then the trust.”

— Joe Abercrombie

321. “The best lessons one teaches oneself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

322. “Freedom did not seem to have made anyone any less angry.”

— Joe Abercrombie

323. “He would have liked to weigh his choices, but for that you need more than one.”

— Joe Abercrombie

324. “Vengeance is a way of clinging to what we have lost. A wedge in the Last Door, and through the crack we can still glimpse the faces of the dead. We strain towards it with all our being, break every rule to have it, but when we clutch it, there is nothing there. Only grief.”

— Joe Abercrombie

325. “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

326. “Misjudgment is as much a part of life as unhappiness. It is nice to hold the power and make choices for everyone. But the risk of making any choice is always that you might make the wrong one. We must make our choices nonetheless. Fear of being a grown-up is a poor reason to remain a child.”

— Joe Abercrombie

327. “I am a bottomless well of revelation but cannot force the ignorant to drink.”

— Joe Abercrombie

328. “Enemies are the price of success.”

— Joe Abercrombie

329. “What is it about power, that it has to be higher up than everyone else? Can a man not be powerful on the ground floor?”

— Joe Abercrombie

330. “Sometimes Wile wondered whether a cause could be right that needed folk burned, cut and otherwise mutilated.”

— Joe Abercrombie

331. “Every war carries within it the seeds of the next.”

— Joe Abercrombie

332. “My suspicions grow with every passing moment. They are never laid to rest. They only change shape.”

— Joe Abercrombie

333. “Monza raised her brows. A strange group she’d gathered, surely, but when you have a half-mad plan you need men at least half-mad to see it through. Sane ones might be tempted to look for a better idea.”

— Joe Abercrombie

334. “You want to be merciful. To stand in the light. I understand it. I admire it. But, my queen... Only the victors can be merciful.”

— Joe Abercrombie

335. “Monza never had understood why getting out a tit or two made for a better painting. But painters seemed to think it did, so tits is what you got.”

— Joe Abercrombie

336. “There is always a way.”

— Joe Abercrombie

337. “Amazing the rubbish idiots will believe if you shout it loudly enough.”

— Joe Abercrombie

338. “Heresy and progress often look much alike.”

— Joe Abercrombie

339. “He wondered for an idle moment if he’d ever see her again, but it didn’t look likely. You have to be realistic, after all, and getting through tomorrow seemed like quite the ambition.”

— Joe Abercrombie

340. “Somewhere in the shadows a clock vomited up a few sluggish chimes.”

— Joe Abercrombie

341. “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

342. “The Forest that had been about her all her life, certain as a mountain, was made ashes. The high gable that had stood for two hundred years fallen in ruin. Throvenland was torn apart like smoke on the wind. Nowhere would be safe, ever again.”

— Joe Abercrombie

343. “Madmen and fools feel no fear. Heroes fear and face the danger anyway.”

— Joe Abercrombie

344. “He had learned long ago that life became much easier if you ignored what was not right before you.”

— Joe Abercrombie

345. “The beauty o’ making yourself a promise is that no one else complains if you break it.”

— Joe Abercrombie

346. “The sad truth is that pretty people can slide through all kinds of scrapes that’d end very badly for the ugly.”

— Joe Abercrombie

347. “You stick a bunch of drunken murderers together, ain’t long before some turn to thieving, then to lying, then to bad language, and pretty soon to sobriety, raising families and making an honest living.”

— Joe Abercrombie

348. “The least a leader can do is to share the burdens of his people. I have little other comfort to give them.”

— Joe Abercrombie

349. “I daresay that’s a better-looking man there. A cleverer man.’ He ran one hand through his short dark hair, frowning at his reflection. ‘Not sure if I trust that bastard, though.”

— Joe Abercrombie

350. “An excessive and a brutal act, but better to act with too much force than too little. Better to be held in fear, than in contempt... There is no place for sentiment in politics.”

— Joe Abercrombie