Joe Abercrombie Quotes

Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.

I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn to stop making them.

That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It's those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit, that prosper.

Have a smile for breakfast, you'll be shitting joy by lunch.

You should laugh every moment you live, for you'll find it decidedly difficult afterwards.

Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.

Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.

Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.

Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.

What’s the difference? Fill a hundred pits with dead Northmen, congratulations, have a parade! Kill one man in the same uniform as you? A crime. A murder. Worse than despicable. Are we not all men? All blood and bone and dreams?

The fool strikes. The wise man smiles, and watches, and learns. Then strikes.

You have to learn to love the small things in life, like a hot bath. You have to love the small things, when you have nothing else

The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick.

It is easy to forget how much you have, when your eyes are always fixed on what you have not.

Fearlessness is a fool's boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that's the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who's worth a damn feels fear. It's the use you make of it that counts.

Luck is a woman. She's drawn to those that least deserve her.

Good steel bends, but never breaks. Good steel stays always sharp and ready. Good steel feels no pain, no pity, and above all, no remorse

If life has taught me one thing, it's that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.

Armour... is part of a state of mind... in which you admit the possibility... of being hit.

If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?

Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.

Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.

Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.

It's hard to be done a favor by a man you hate. It's hard to hate him so much afterwards. Losing an enemy can be worse than losing a friend, if you've had him for long enough.