Haley M

“Glokta lurched towards him, hands spread out on the table, lips curling back to show his ruined mouth. ‘Dead! He died on the bridge! And what remains? A fucking ruin with his name! A limping, skulking shadow! A crippled ghost, clinging to life the way the smell of piss clings to a beggar. He has no friends, this loathsome fucking remnant, and he wants none! Get you gone, West! Go back to Varuz, and to Luthar, and the rest of those empty bastards! There’s no one here you know!’ Glokta’s lips trembled and spat with revulsion. He wasn’t sure who disgusted him more – West, or himself.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“friends can be useful. If nothing else, a friend is one less enemy.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“As for being a good man,’ and Glokta curled his lip, ‘that ship sailed long ago, and I wasn’t even there to wave it off.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“I have a conscience, but it’s a feeble, withered shred of a thing. It couldn’t protect you or anyone else from a stiff breeze.’ Glokta sighed, long and hard. The room was too hot, too bright, his eyes were sore and twitchy and he rubbed at them slowly as he spoke. ‘You could not even guess at the things that I have done. Awful, evil, obscene, the telling of them alone could make you puke.’ He shrugged. ‘They nag at me from time to time, but I tell myself I had good reasons. The years pass, the unimaginable becomes everyday, the hideous becomes tedious, the unbearable becomes routine. I push it all into the dark corners of my mind, and it’s incredible the room back there. Amazing what one can live with.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged