Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “The truth is overrated.” Vick let the purse drop into his hand. “An actor should know that.”

— Joe Abercrombie

352. “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

353. “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

354. “When you have a load to lift, you’re better lifting than weeping.”

— Joe Abercrombie

355. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

357. “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

358. “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

359. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

361. “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

362. “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

363. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

366. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

370. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

373. “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

374. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

376. “Well don’t just hit ‘em, you lazy bastards!” he shouted in a broken voice. “Pull ’em!”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

378. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

380. “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

381. “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

382. “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

383. “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

384. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

389. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

391. “It’s a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you are lying on your death bead, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

393. “And here it is. That horrible, beautiful, stretched out moment between stubbing your toe and feeling the hurt. How long do I have before the pain comes? How bad will it be when it does?”

— Joe Abercrombie

394. “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

395. “I’m a man.” Koll’s shoulders sagged. “When did that happen?” “It just happens.” “I wish I knew what it meant, being a man.” “Guess it means something different for each one of us. The gods know I’m no sage, but if I’ve realized anything, it’s that life isn’t about making something perfect.”

— Joe Abercrombie

396. “Defeats do men far more good than victories.”

— Joe Abercrombie

397. “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

398. “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

399. “There’s no need to rush, Arch Lector. That’s the trouble with good legs, you tend to run around too much. If you have trouble moving, on the other hand, you don’t move until you damn well know it’s time.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie