John Carter > John's Quotes

“Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Love and hate have just a knife's edge between them.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“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

“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

“Has it ever occured to you, Master Ninefingers, that a sword is different from other weapons? Axes and maces and so forth are lethal enough, but they hang on the belt like dumb brutes. But a sword...a sword has a voice.
Sheathed it has little to say, to be sure, but you need only put your hand on the hilt and it begins to whisper in your enemy's ear. A gentle word. A word of caution. Do you hear it?
Now, compare it to the sword half drawn. It speaks louder, does it not? It hisses a dire threat. It makes a deadly promise. Do you hear it?
Now compare it to the sword full drawn. It shouts now, does it not? It screams defiance! It bellows a challenge! Do you hear it?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“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

“My name is Nicomo Cosca, famed solider of fortune, and I am here for dinner.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“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

“A man lost in the desert must take such water as he is offered, no matter who it comes from.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“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 never gotten anywhere.”
― Joe Abercrombie

“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 a
hero. A man like that, there's nothing he won't do, and he'll always find himself an
excuse.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Round and round in circles we go, clutching at successes we never grasp, endlessly tripping over the same old failures. Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Some things have to be done. It's better to do them, than to live with the fear of them.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

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

“Apologise to my fucking dice!”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings