Crystal > Crystal's Quotes

“You can't plan for everything or you never get started in the first place.”
― Jim Butcher, Changes

“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?”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“If you want to write a negative review, don't tickle me gently with your aesthetic displeasure about my work. Unleash the goddamn Kraken."

[on Twitter, July 17, 2012]”
― Scott Lynch

“You can't help being young, but it's past time that you stopped being stupid.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“The land is thirsty. People are thirsty. But only blood will bring back the rain.”
― Kelan Gerriety, Crimson Skies

“In the end it seems we're just toys, easy to break and hard to mend.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“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

“Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

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

“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

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

“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

“I’ve fought in three campaigns,” 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

“Every man has his excuses, and the more vile the man becomes, the more touching the story has to be. What is my story now, I wonder?”
― 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

“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

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

“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

“If life has taught me one thing, it's that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half a King

“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.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

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

“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.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

“All an arsehole knows about is shit. ~ Dogman”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“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

“What is the world coming to when an honest man cannot burn corpses without suspicion?" asked Nothing.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half a King

“Knives,’ muttered Calder, ‘and threats, and bribes, and war?’

Bayaz’ eyes shone with the lamplight. ‘Yes?’

‘What kind of a fucking wizard are you?’

‘The kind you obey.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

“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

“Power makes all things right. That is my first law, and my last. That is the only law that I acknowledge.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

“Take everything as a compliment, you can never be insulted.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half the World