Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “A minister stands for Father Peace, but a good one is no stranger to Mother War.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

403. “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

404. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

406. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

409. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

411. “Pain is the best schoolmaster, as you will soon discover.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

413. “Dimbik had once been told that the best soldiers are rarely courageous. That was when he had been sure it was the career for him. He started to slide one hand towards his sword, far from sure what he would do with it once it reached the hilt.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

415. “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

416. “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

417. “History is not the story of battles between right and wrong, but between one man’s right and another’s. 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

418. “The gods love to laugh at a happy man, however.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

420. “Her mother had always warned her a man is judged by his best moment, a woman by her worst.”

— Joe Abercrombie

421. “He tried to tell himself the dead are dead, but he knew Jenner had been right. Their ghosts stick in the minds of those that knew them, loved them, hated them. Those that killed them most of all.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

423. “The ones you like straight away rarely turn out to be your favourites.”

— Joe Abercrombie

424. “And loyalty? A trick those with power played on those without to make them act against their own interests.”

— Joe Abercrombie

425. “Vengeance can feel fine, but it’s a luxury. It doesn’t fill your belly, or keep the rain off.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

427. “For a man reckoned clever, he got wedged in a lot of stupid corners.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

429. “Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, that’s my advice.”

— Joe Abercrombie

430. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

432. “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

433. “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

434. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

436. “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

437. “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

438. “Some people, Orso supposed, can never forgive being forgiven.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

441. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

443. “Principles are like clothes,’ said Vick, straightening her jacket. ‘You have to change them to suit the audience.”

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

445. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

447. “Surprise makes brave men cowards, strong men weak, wise men fools.”

— Joe Abercrombie

448. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie