Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

355. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

357. “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

358. “Temple grimaced, and twitched, and fidgeted with a frayed sleeve. ‘What can we do, though?’ ‘Only follow our consciences.’ Temple rounded on him angrily. ‘For a mercenary you talk a lot about conscience!’ ‘Why concern yourself unless yours bothers you?’ ‘As far as I can tell, you’re still taking Cosca’s money!’ ‘If I stopped, would you?’ Temple opened his mouth, then soundlessly shut it and scowled off at the horizon, picking at his sleeve, and picking, and picking.”

— Joe Abercrombie

359. “The best lessons one teaches oneself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

360. “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

361. “You cannot expect all the heroes to survive a good song.”

— Joe Abercrombie

362. “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

363. “You would’ve thought the more pain you suffered, the more you’d get used to it, but it was the other way around.”

— Joe Abercrombie

364. “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

365. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

367. “When one man knowingly kills another, they call it murder! When society causes the deaths of thousands, they shrug and call it a fact of life.”

— Joe Abercrombie

368. “Never thought o’ myself as a man who fills sacks with heads.” “No one sets off in that direction,” said Clover, puffing out his cheeks one more time. “But before you know it, there you bloody are.”

— Joe Abercrombie

369. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

371. “She scarcely ever had a moment to herself, but she was grateful for that, too. When she was alone, the things she had seen and done the day of the uprising rushed into her mind, like filthy water into a holed boat, and dragged her down so quickly she felt she was drowning.”

— Joe Abercrombie

372. “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

373. “That was the age of great men, doing what was right.”

— Joe Abercrombie

374. “Everyone finds a way to make their side the right one, after all.”

— Joe Abercrombie

375. “Nothing to it. You treat folk the way you’d want to be treated, and you can’t go far wrong.”

— Joe Abercrombie

376. “And, almost without realizing it, respect can develop. Liking. Even love.′ Laithlin’s voice seemed suddenly broken. “Almost... without realizing it.”

— Joe Abercrombie

377. “The definition of all right changes with the passing winters, I find. I’m about all right by the standards of the last few days. Twenty years ago I’d have considered this close to death.”

— Joe Abercrombie

378. “Evil is not the opposite of good. It is what we call another man’s notion of good when it differs from ours.”

— Joe Abercrombie

379. “Watching a man’s entrails spilling out is excellent entertainment, but the sight of his cock, well, that would be obscene.”

— Joe Abercrombie

380. “It was ridiculous the power she had over him. The difference between misery and happiness was the right word from her.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

382. “Didn’t seem likely, but what’s the point of likely fantasies?”

— Joe Abercrombie

383. “I always thought of being together as the end of the work. Turns out it’s where the work starts.”

— Joe Abercrombie

384. “I find reputations rarely fit people all that well. What are they, after all, but costumes we put on to disguise ourselves?”

— Joe Abercrombie

385. “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

386. “But that’s war for you. An ugly business that only leaves bad men better off. Why folk insisted on singing about great warriors all the time, Rikke couldn’t have said. Why not sing about really good fishermen, or bakers, or roofers, or some other folk who actually left the world a better place, rather than heaping up corpses and setting fire to things? Was that behaviour to encourage?”

— Joe Abercrombie

387. “A man who’s not content with what he’s got, well, more than likely he won’t be content with what he hasn’t.”

— Joe Abercrombie

388. “Fighting every fight you’re offered doesn’t make you a big man, it makes you a fool.”

— Joe Abercrombie

389. “Names turned over by time, like the plough turning the soil. Bringing up the new while the old were buried in the mud.”

— Joe Abercrombie

390. “Disbelieve this sword, it will still cut you. He is God. We all walk His path regardless.”

— Joe Abercrombie

391. “That’s what war does. Strips people and places of their identities and turns them into enemies in a line, positions to be taken, resources to be foraged. Anonymous things that can be carelessly crushed, and stolen, and burned without guilt.”

— Joe Abercrombie

392. “You have to be grateful for the small things, when any minute might be your last.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

394. “She surely can cook a fight from the most peaceful ingredients. But nothing worth doing is easy. I love her in spite of it. I love her because of it. I love her.” And his face broke out in that grin again. “Every day’s a new adventure, that’s for sure.”

— Joe Abercrombie

395. “But that’s the nice thing about looking backwards. You can pick out the bits that suit your story and toss the unhappy truths to the wind.”

— Joe Abercrombie

396. “Strange, how quickly a king could become an animal. Or half a king half an animal. Perhaps even those we raise highest never get that far above the mud.”

— Joe Abercrombie

397. “All heroes’ news, like something from the songs, but there’s nothing like others’ successes to make your own failures sting the worse.”

— Joe Abercrombie

398. “His ability was exceeded only by his belief in his own ability.”

— Joe Abercrombie

399. “Science is a system of rational thought devised to investigate the world and establish the laws by which it operates. The scientist uses those laws to achieve an effect. One which might easily appear magical in the eyes of the primitive.”

— Joe Abercrombie

400. “It is my sad observation that some men always want more.”

— Joe Abercrombie