Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “You have to be grateful for the small things, when any minute might be your last.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

403. “Remember, though, that you are the king’s observer, not the king’s champion.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

405. “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

406. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

408. “No one cares about the past any more,′ he whispered. ‘They don’t see that you can’t have a future without a past.”

— Joe Abercrombie

409. “Still, it was better to swear an oath and never follow through than not even to bother with the oath. Wasn’t it?”

— Joe Abercrombie

410. “Some men you stick to right off. But it’s those that take time to stick that stick longest.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

412. “It is easy to speak of the past, impossible to go there.”

— Joe Abercrombie

413. “Hoping for a thing often seems the best way o’ bringing on the opposite.”

— Joe Abercrombie

414. “Vick learned long ago that might have is a game with no winners. Few games do have winners, in the end.”

— Joe Abercrombie

415. “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

416. “When do I rest, then?” “In the songs of great heroes, do you hear often of resting?”

— Joe Abercrombie

417. “There’s no changing yesterday. Only tomorrow.”

— Joe Abercrombie

418. “Memories sharp enough to cut himself on – the smells, the sounds, the feel of the air on his skin, the desperate hope and mad anger.”

— Joe Abercrombie

419. “You keep an oath not for the oath but for yourself.”

— Joe Abercrombie

420. “It is healthy to be disabused of our self-deceptions every now and then, even if it hurts.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

422. “He was less and less sure with every day that being a better man was worth all the effort.”

— Joe Abercrombie

423. “He was developing a sneaking feeling he had found his way onto the wrong side. Again. But it’s not always easy to tell when you’re picking. Perhaps, as Kahdia once told him, you are on the wrong side as soon as you pick one.”

— Joe Abercrombie

424. “Some men laugh easily. It makes them winning dinner companions.”

— Joe Abercrombie

425. “It was difficult to maintain any sense of superiority in the face of his utter dependence on other people.”

— Joe Abercrombie

426. “One body might just be a coincidence. Two make a conspiracy.”

— Joe Abercrombie

427. “Love and hate have just a knife’s edge between them.”

— Joe Abercrombie

428. “There was the very slightest pause. Probably no more than a breath, for all it felt far longer. While everyone assessed the odds and the outcomes. While everyone judged just where the shifting power sat. While everything dropped into place in Dimbik’s mind and, no doubt, the minds of every other person present. Just a breath, and everything was rearranged.”

— Joe Abercrombie

429. “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

430. “Could he truly pretend that he wanted to be her friend? A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time, and had never got anywhere.”

— Joe Abercrombie

431. “Why give them a proper burning?” Rulf caught the lad by the arm. “Because if we beat beggars here, we’re no better than beggars. If we beat great men, we’re greater still.”

— Joe Abercrombie

432. “Stacked up after the plague came through, spread out after a battle?’ ‘Aye, I’ve seen that.’ ‘Did you notice some of those corpses had a kind of glow about them? A sweet smell like roses on a spring morning?’ Shivers frowned. ‘No.’ ‘The good men and the bad, then – all looked about the same, did they? They always did to me, I can tell you that.”

— Joe Abercrombie

433. “In bloody days, swords were worth more than gods.”

— Joe Abercrombie

434. “Shock and surprise, my little beauties, and quickness to strike, and lack of pity. These are the things that make a killer.”

— Joe Abercrombie

435. “Men must sometimes do what they do not like if they are to be remembered.”

— Joe Abercrombie

436. “Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers...”

— Joe Abercrombie

437. “By swap news do you mean drink?” “I do, and that excessively.”

— Joe Abercrombie

438. “Broad kept sweeping. He’d learned in Styria there’s a lot of things that are better not thought about. Couldn’t be a coincidence that the happiest men Broad had ever known were generally the stupidest.”

— Joe Abercrombie

439. “There is a time for wondering what a man wants,” said Fror, no fear at all in his. “And there is a time for splitting his head. This is that second time.”

— Joe Abercrombie

440. “You’re a fine one to talk, Skinny Rikke. Every pinch o’ meat fell off you when you went to see the witch. You’re like a head stuck on a spear these days, but without the flies. Most o’ the flies, at least.” And she burst out laughing.”

— Joe Abercrombie

441. “A dour-faced woman was working at a spinning wheel on a doorstep, and she frowned at Logen as he walked past with the unconscious apprentice over his shoulder. Logen smiled back at her. She was no beauty, that was sure, but it had been a very long time. The woman ducked into her house and kicked the door shut, leaving the wheel spinning. Logen sighed. The old magic was still there.”

— Joe Abercrombie

442. “We all got our reasons... good men and bad men. It’s all a matter of where you stand.”

— Joe Abercrombie

443. “There was nothing to be gained by losing his temper. There was never anything to be gained by that.”

— Joe Abercrombie

444. “Logen still remembered the first time he had to leave someone behind, remembered it like it was yesterday. Strange how the boy’s name had gone but the face was with him still.”

— Joe Abercrombie

445. “I apologise, your Highness. Murder can be a painful business.”

— Joe Abercrombie

446. “Perhaps the vengeance could wait, at least until he had a bigger blade to work with. You have to be realistic, after all.”

— Joe Abercrombie

447. “She never saw more damage done than by folk acting on high principle.”

— Joe Abercrombie

448. “Either you are a part of my future, or a relic of the past.”

— Joe Abercrombie

449. “Secrets, power. It’s all a metaphor.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie