Joe Abercrombie

“History is littered with dead good men.”

“The tongueless torturer and the flower of chivalry. An unlikely alliance.”

“What a place. Glokta stifled a smile. It reminds me of myself, in a way. We both were magnificent once, and we both have our best days far behind us.”

“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.”

“All you can do is take each day as it comes. Try and do the best you can with what you're given. You won't always do the right thing, but you can try. And you can try to do the right thing next time. That, and stay alive.”

“One last chance. That’s all I’m asking.” He had lost count of the number of last chances he had wasted. “Just one more. God!” He had never believed in God for an instant. “Fates!” He had never believed in Fates either. “Anyone!” He had never believed in anything much beyond the next drink. “Just one… more… chance.”“Alright. One more.”Cosca blinked. “God? Is that… you?”Someone chuckled. A woman’s voice, and a sharp, mocking, most ungodlike sort of a chuckle. “You can kneel if you like, Cosca.”

“She had a crooked smile on her face as she turned, but it slid off suddenly when she saw who was standing there. Glokta snorted. 'Don't worry, I get that reaction from everyone. Even myself, every morning, when I look into the mirror.' If I can even manage to stand up in front of the damn thing.”

“Where d'you get the knife?" He wished he had one."He gave it to me." There was a crumpled shape in the shadows by the wall, the matting all around soaked with dark blood. "This way.”

“What poet was it who wrote there's no pain worse than the pain of a broken heart? Sentimental shit. He should have spent more time in the Emporer's prisons.”

“First it is done to us, then we do it to others, then we order it done. Such is the way of things”

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

“Honest men are so very rare, they are often mistaken for criminals, for rebels, for madmen. What were your crimes, anyway, but to be different?''Robbery the first time, and I served seven years. When they caught me again there were eighty-four counts, with fourteen murders.'Cosca cocked an eyebrow. 'But we're you truly guilty?''Yes'He frowned for a moment then waved it away. 'Nobody's perfect. Lets leave the past behind us.”

“One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.”

“Shivers heaved out a sigh. “Just trying to make tomorrow that bit better than today is all. I’m one of those … you’ve got a word for it, don’t you?”“Idiots?”He looked sideways at her. “It was a different one I had in mind.”“Optimists.”“That’s the one. I’m an optimist.”“How’s it working out for you?”“Not great, but I keep hoping.”“That’s optimists. You bastards never learn.”

“A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success.”

“Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he's a lover.”

“An Army is an instrument of government. It must be used in such a way that it furthers the interests of government. Otherwise what use is it? Only an extremely costly machine for......minting medals.”

“Water dripping from his slapping fruits”

“Summers past love company, seems every time you turn around there's more o' the bastards at your back.”

“Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us.”

“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.”

“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.”

“One day you're something, so promising and full o' dares, so big the world's too small a place to hold you. Then, 'fore you know it, you're old, and you realise all them things you had in mind you'll never get to. All them doors you felt too big to fit through have already shut. Only one left open and it leads to nothing but nothing.”

“Inquisitor Lorsen's thin lip curled. "There is truly nothing in you of what separates man from animal, is there? You are bereft of conscience. An utter absence of morality. You have no principle beyond the selfish."Cosca's face hardened as he leaned forwards. "Perhaps when you have faced as many disappointments and suffered as many betrayals as I, you will see it - there is no principle beyond the selfish, Inquisitor, and men are animals. Conscience is a burden we choose to bear. Morality is the lie we tell ourselves to make its bearing easier. There have been many times in my life when I have wished it was not so. But it is so.”

“Lorsen shook his head in amazement. 'You truly are disgusting.''I would be the last to disagree, but you fail to see that you are worse. No man capable of greater evil than the one who thinks himself in the right. No purpose more evil than the higher purpose. I freely admit I am a villain. That's why you hired me. But I am no hypocrite.”

“Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.”

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

“The dead can forgive. The dead can be forgiven. The rest of us have better things to do. (Monza Murcatto)”

“Unsheathe your swords!' He considered that. 'Or cheaper weapons! Let us ... do some good!”

“But you love to play the good man,don't you? Do you know what's worse than a villain? A villain who thinks he's ahero. A man like that, there's nothing he won't do, and he'll always find himself anexcuse.”

“It always amazes me, how swiftly problems can be solved, once you start cutting things off people.”

“They appear somewhat unreliable," he murmured."Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there's not a man of them I wouldn't trust my mother to.""Are you sure?""She's been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?”

“Then, once he had eaten, he would ask the spirits for guidance. Their guidance was pretty useless, but the company would be welcome.”

“Kill me?' The Bloody-Nine laughed louder than ever. 'I do the killing, fool!”

“Have you no pity?' Glokta could only shrug. 'I did have. As a boy I was soft-hearted beyond the point of foolishness. I swear, I would cry at a fly caught in a spider's web.' He grimaced at a brutal spasm through his leg as he turned for the door. 'Constant pain has cured me of that.”

“She poured out a measure but Temple declined. 'Drink and I have had some long and painful conversations and found we simply can't agree.''Drink and I can't agree either.' She shrugged and tossed it down herself. 'But we keep on having the argument.”

“You are Shenkt? I expected more.”“Pray to whatever god you believe in that you never see more.”“I do not pray.”Shenkt leaned close, and whispered in his ear. “I advise you to start.”

“The only difference between war and murder is the number of dead.”

“Prickomo fucking cocksca. That bastard old arsehole-fucker.”

“severed heads,' Cosca was explaining, 'never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic, sensibility,They can make a point a great deal more eloquently then those still attached.”

“If you wanted to see my cock that badly, you could just have asked.' 'No doubt a thing o' haunting beauty but i came for something else.”

“What are you going to do?’ whispered Temple.‘There was a time I’d have gone charging over there without a thought for the costs and got bloody.’ Lamb lifted the glass and looked at it for a moment. ‘But my father always said patience is the king of virtues. A man has to be realistic. Has to be.’‘So what are you going to do?’‘Wait. Think. Prepare.’ Lamb swallowed the last measure and bared his teeth at the glass. ‘Then get bloody.”

“Are you entirely sure of that knot?' asked Morveer. 'There is no place in the plan for a lengthy drop'.'Twenty-eight strides', said Friendly.'What?''The drop'.A brief pause, 'That is not helpful'.”

“The man is a monster. The worst I have ever seen, in fact, since I last looked in the mirror. The truth? I am rotting too. I am buried alive, and already rotting. If I was not such a coward I would kill myself, but I am, and so I must content myself with killing others in the hope that one day, if I can only wade deep enough in blood, I will come out clean.”

“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?”

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

“West stared at her as she trudged off up the hill after the Northmen, hardly able to believe his ears. She was happy to bed that stinking savage, but he was too angry? It was so unfair he almost choked on his rage.”

“There was a time he’d heard tales of Dab Sweet and he’d stuck thumbs in his belt and chin to the sky and tricked himself that was how his life had been. But the years scraped by hard as ever and he got less and the stories more ’til they were tales of a man he’d never met succeeding at what he’d never have dreamed of attempting.”

“I have seen hell, it is a great city under siege.”

“Hurray', shouted Glokta. 'Porridge again!'He looked over at the motionless Practical. 'Porridge and honey, better than money, everything's funny, with porridge and honey!”