Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 7 of 10

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

— Joe Abercrombie

302. “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

303. “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

304. “A cynic might observe that the scriptures can be used to support both sides of every argument.”

— Joe Abercrombie

305. “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

306. “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.”

— Joe Abercrombie

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

310. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

312. “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

313. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

319. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

321. “What better foundation for an alliance than mutual hatred and suspicion?”

— Joe Abercrombie

322. “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

323. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

325. “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

326. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

328. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

333. “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

334. “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

335. “There is always a way.”

— Joe Abercrombie

336. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

340. “Enemies are the price of success.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

342. “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

343. “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

344. “The best lessons one teaches oneself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

345. “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

346. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

349. “It’s not easy is it? Being a great man’s son. You’d thought that would come with all kinds of advantages – with borrowed admiration, and respect. But it’s only as easy as it is for the seeds of a great tree, trying to grow in its choking shadow. Not many make it to the sunlight for themselves.”

— Joe Abercrombie

350. “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