Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Knowledge is so often the antidote to fear. But not here. Not now.”

— Joe Abercrombie

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

308. “The best lessons one teaches oneself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

310. “Once you set your mind on killing, it is hard to choose the number of the dead.”

— Joe Abercrombie

311. “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

312. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

316. “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

317. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

319. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

330. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

332. “I have a plan,” said Nothing. “Does it involve a sword?” asked Jaud. A pause. “All my plans do.” “Do you have a sword?” Another. “No.” “How will your plan work without one?” muttered Sumael. A third. “Death waits for us all.”

— Joe Abercrombie

333. “You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza.’ She sighed, as if that was an accident. As if she hadn’t spent an hour preening herself before the mirror. ‘Facts are facts. Stating them isn’t a gift. You only prove you’re not blind.’ She yawned, stretched in her saddle, made him wait a moment longer. ‘But I’ll hear more.”

— Joe Abercrombie

334. “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

335. “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

336. “The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense.”

— Joe Abercrombie

337. “Brand stared in sick disbelief. He’d been sure among all those lads someone would speak, for they were honest enough. Or Hunnan would tell his part in it, for he was a respected master-at-arms. The king or the queen would draw out the truth, for they were wise and righteous. The gods wouldn’t allow such an injustice to pass. Someone would do something. Maybe, like him, they were all waiting for someone else to put things right.”

— Joe Abercrombie

338. “She was the scab he couldn’t stop picking, the split lip he couldn’t stop biting at, the loose thread he couldn’t stop tugging.”

— Joe Abercrombie

339. “Battles may sometimes be won by the brave, but wars are always won by the clever.”

— Joe Abercrombie

340. “All too often when we topple something hateful, rather than breaking it and starting afresh, we raise ourselves up in its place.”

— Joe Abercrombie

341. “One need not love one’s enemy, or even fear him, to desire peace. One need only love oneself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

342. “There aren’t many good things don’t have a splinter of selfishness in them somewhere, after all.”

— Joe Abercrombie

343. “Seemed that Logen’s father had been right. You can never have too many knives.”

— Joe Abercrombie

344. “He’s a bloody idiot who knows nothing about anything, but he was born with a cock, so he gets to decide for all of us.”

— Joe Abercrombie

345. “A minister stands for Father Peace, but a good one is no stranger to Mother War.”

— Joe Abercrombie

346. “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

347. “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

348. “Of all things, men most love to watch ohers face Death. It reminds them they yet live.”

— Joe Abercrombie

349. “But things are always going to be better, or were better long ago. No politician ever got anywhere by telling people things are just right as they are.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie