Skifr Quotes

“Heresy and progress often look much alike.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half the World

“You will be struck, and when you are the force of it must not stagger you, the pain of it must not slow you, the shock of it must not cause you to doubt.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half the World

“Did you see it?" asked Yarvi.
"I had that questionable privilege."
"What do you think?"
"She is wretched. She is all pride and anger. She has too much confidence and too little. She does not know herself." The figure pushed back her hood. A black-skinned old woman with a face lean as famine and hair shaved to gray fuzz. She picked her nose with one long forefinger, carefully examined the results, then flicked them away "The girl is stupid as a stump. Worse. Most stumps have the dignity to rot quietly without causing offense."
"I'm right here," Thorn managed to hiss from her hands and knees.
"Just where the drunk boy put you." The woman flashed a smile at Brand that seemed to have too many teeth. "I like him, though: he is pretty and desperate. My favorite combination.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half the World

“Fear not, my doves!" Thorn jumped as someone flung an arm around her shoulders. The strange woman who had watched Thorn fight Brand a few days before thrust her gray-stubbled skull between her and her mother. "For the wise Father Yarvi has placed your daughter's education in my dextrous hands."
Thorn hadn't thought her spirits could drop any lower, but the gods had found a way. "Education?"
The woman hugged them tighter, her smell a heady mix of sweat, incense, herbs and piss. "It's where I teach and you learn."
"And who . . . " Thorn's mother gave the ragged woman a nervous look, "or what . . . are you?"
"Lately, a thief." When that sharpened nervousness into alarm she added brightly, "but also an experienced killer!”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half the World

“You must be quicker to strike and quicker when you do. You must be tougher and cleverer, you must always look to attack, and you must fight without honour, without conscience, without pity.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Half the World