“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“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, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“Fearlessness is a fool's boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that's the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who's worth a damn feels fear. It's the use you make of it that counts.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“Those with the least always lose the most in war.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“All an arsehole knows about is shit. ~ Dogman”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“An open mind is like to an open wound,' growled Glokta. 'Vulnerable to poison.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“Strange, isn't it,' mused Glokta as he watched him struggle for air. 'Big men, small men, thin men, fat men, clever men, stupid men, they all respond the same to a fist in the guts. One minute you think you're the most powerful man in the world. The next you can't even breathe by yourself.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from 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, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“An open mind is like to an open wound. Vulnerable to poison. Liable to fester. Apt to give its owner only pain.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“You don’t have to be ready. You just have to go.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“One should learn the lessons of history. The mistakes of the past need only be made once. Unless there are no other choices. ~ Bayaz”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“A man who does't want opinions should keep his own mouth shut.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“Friends? In my experience, a friend is merely an acquaintance who has yet to betray you. Is that what you are, Harker?”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“There was no such thing as luck. Luck was a word idiots used to explain the consequences of their own rashness, and selfishness, and stupidity. More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he's a lover.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“They have that most strange and dangerous of qualities,” said Cosca.
“They think they’re in the right.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“The skies make no special dispensation for Magi, boy, they piss on everyone the same.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“So we wait?” asked Severard.
“We wait, and we look to our defences. That and we try to find some money. Do you have any cash, Severard?”
“I did have some. I gave it to a girl, down in the slums.”
“Ah. Shame.”
“Not really, she fucks like a madman. I’d thoroughly recommend her, if you’re interested.”
Glokta winced as his knee clicked. “What a thoroughly heartwarming tale, Severard, I never had you down for a romantic. I’d sing a ballad if I wasn’t so short of funds.”
“I could ask around. How much are we talking about?”
“Oh, not much. Say, half a million marks?”
One of the Practical’s eyebrows went up sharply. He reached into his pocket, dug around for a moment, pulled his hand out and opened it. A few copper coins shone in his palm.
“Twelve bits,” he said. “Twelve bits is all I can raise.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“Very well, Practical Vitari, if you really can’t resist me. You’ll have to go on top, though, if you don’t mind.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from 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, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“Don’t deceive yourself. Everyone is guilty of something, and even the innocent can be a threat. Perhaps it takes small crimes to prevent bigger ones, Colonel West, but it’s up to bigger men than us to decide.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from 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, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“Empathy? What’s that?” Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. “It’s a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“A choice between killing and dying is no choice at all. You have to be realistic about these things. b”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“We are leaders. War is what happens when we fail. Or are pushed into failure by the rash and the foolish. Victory is better than defeat, but . . . not by much.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“All the great heroes of old, you know - the great kings, the great generals - they all faced adversity from time to time.” Jezal looked up. He had almost forgotten that Bayaz was there. “Suffering is what gives a man strength, my boy, just as the steel most hammered turns out the hardest.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“There can be a greater power in words than in all the steel within the Circle of the World.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
Joe Abercrombie
Born place: in Lancaster, England, The United Kingdom
Born date December 31, 1974
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“It is in our collective behavior that we are the most mysterious. We won't be able to construct machines like ourselves until we've understood this, and we're not even close. All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives. By the time we reach the end, each of us has taken in a staggering store, enough to exhaust any computer, much of it incomprehensible, and we generally manage to put out even more than we take in. Information is our source of energy; we are driven by it. It has become a tremendous enterprise, a kind of energy system on its own. All 3 billion of us are being connected by telephones, radios, television sets, airplanes, satellites, harangues on public-address systems, newspapers, magazines, leaflets dropped from great heights, words got in edgewise. We are becoming a grid, a circuitry around the earth.”
― Lewis Thomas, quote from The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
“Edmund Burke in his critique of the French Revolution. Any society, he wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, which destroys the fabric of its state, must soon be “disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality”.”
― Tony Judt, quote from Ill Fares the Land
“Long looking with admiration produces change. From your heroes you pick up mannerisms and phrases and tones of voice and facial expressions and habits and demeanors and convictions and beliefs. The more admirable the hero is and the more intense your admiration is, the more profound will be your transformation. In the case of Jesus, he is infinitely admirable, and our admiration rises to the most absolute worship. Therefore, when we behold him as we should, the change is profound.”
― John Piper, quote from God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself
“It’s another post-EU incongruity. Spas are sissy, indulgent, European. Hamams are authentic and Turkish.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from The Dervish House
“And secrets are dangerous. They start small but grow with every evasive answer or outright lie that protects them. Nevertheless, I confess to finding the closeness such conspiracy breeds irresistibly delicious.”
― Paula Brackston, quote from The Witch's Daughter
A Prisoner of Birth
Windmills of the God...
Out of Breath
The Go-Between
The Cave
The Freedom Writers...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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