Top 500 Joe Abercrombie Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “You cannot expect all the heroes to survive a good song.”

— Joe Abercrombie

402. “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

403. “I am ready to die, but I refuse to lose.”

— Joe Abercrombie

404. “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

405. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

412. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

415. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

419. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

423. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

425. “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

426. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

431. “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

432. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

434. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

436. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

438. “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

439. “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

440. “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

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

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

— Joe Abercrombie

445. “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

446. “Always the ones quickest to insults got the thinnest skin, for some reason.”

— Joe Abercrombie

447. “Because the vast majority of men would far rather be told what to do than make their own choices. Obedience is easy.”

— Joe Abercrombie

448. “Help with strange problems comes from strange people.”

— Joe Abercrombie

449. “One of my greatest pleasures is a good cut of meat, and the bloodier the better. Just show them the flame, I always tell my cook. Just show it to them.”

— Joe Abercrombie

450. “You killed him all to bits, and robbed everyone who knew him, and cut all the good he might ever do out of the world.”

— Joe Abercrombie