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“Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Body found floating by the docks...”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.”
― Stephen Fry

“But that was civilisation, so far as Logen could tell. People with nothing better to do, dreaming up ways to make easy things difficult.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate.”
― Tony Kushner, Perestroika

“He smiled, and his face was like the sun.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Achilles was looking at me. “Your hair never quite lies flat, here.â€� He touched my head, just behind my ear. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you how I like it.â€�

My scalp prickled where his fingers had been. “You haven’t,� I said.

“I should have.� His hand drifted down to the vee at the base of my throat, drew softly across the pulse. “What about this? Have I told you what I think of this, just here?�

“No,� I said.

“This surely then.� His hand moved across the muscles of my chest; my skin warmed beneath it. “Have I told you of this?�

“That you have told me.� My breath caught a little as I spoke.

“And what of this?� His hand lingered over my hips, drew down the line of my thigh. “Have I spoken of it?�

“You have.�

“And this? Surely I would not have forgotten this.� His cat’s smile. “Tell me I did not.�

“You did not.�

“There is this too.� His hand was ceaseless now. “I know I have told you of this.�

I closed my eyes. “Tell me again,â€� I said.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Atheism is a non-prophet organization.”
― George Carlin

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“What is it that the child has to teach?

The child naively believes that everything should be fair
and everyone should be honest,
that only good should prevail,
that everybody should have what they want
and there should be no pain or sadness.

The child believes the world should be perfect
and is outraged to discover it is not.

And the child is right.”
― Tzvi Freeman, Wisdom to Heal the Earth - Meditations and Teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“You have to realistic about these things.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“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.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

“Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“You were a hero round these parts. That's what they call you when you kill so many people the word murderer falls short.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“You should laugh every moment you live, for you'll find it decidedly difficult afterwards.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“I’ve fought in three campaigns,â€� he began. “In seven pitched battles. In countless raids and skirmishes and desperate defences, and bloody actions of every kind. I’ve fought in the driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I’ve been fighting all my life, one enemy or another, one friend or another. I’ve known little else. I’ve seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothing at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killing her husband, and I threw her down a well. And that’s far from the worst of it. Life used to be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper.

“I’ve fought ten single combats and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons. I’ve been ruthless, and brutal, and a coward. I’ve stabbed men in the back, burned them, drowned them, crushed them with rocks, killed them asleep, unarmed, or running away. I’ve run away myself more than once. I’ve pissed myself with fear. I’ve begged for my life. I’ve been wounded, often, and badly, and screamed and cried like a baby whose mother took her tit away. I’ve no doubt the world would be a better place if I’d been killed years ago, but I haven’t been, and I don’t know why.�

He looked down at his hands, pink and clean on the stone. “There are few men with more blood on their hands than me. None, that I know of. The Bloody-Nine they call me, my enemies, and there’s a lot of ’em. Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nothing but more blood. It follows me now, always, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never be free of it. I should never be free of it. I’ve earned it. I’ve deserved it. I’ve sought it out. Such is my punishment.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“Honour, eh? What the hell is that anyway? Every man thinks it's something different. You can't drink it. You can't fuck it. The more of it you have the less good it does you, and if you've got none at all you don't miss it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Well. What can we do, except try to do better?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“I've made peace with myself.
Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win.
Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“People love to see death. It reminds them that however mean, however low, however horrible their lives becomeâ€� at least they have one.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“You can never have too many knives, his father had told him. Unless they're pointed at you, and by people who don't like you much. ”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. Still, the struggle itself is worthwhile. Knowledge is the root of power, after all.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“That was the difference between a hero and a villain, a soldier and a murderer, a victory and a crime. Which side of a river you called home.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“Chose? If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Luck is a woman. She's drawn to those that least deserve her.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Sometimes men change for the better. Sometimes men change for the worse. And often, very often, given time and opportunity . . .â€� He waved his flask around for a moment, then shrugged. ‘They change back.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“Have a smile for breakfast, you'll be shitting joy by lunch.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold