By swap news do you mean drink?" "I do, and that excessively.

— Joe Abercrombie

... Chief without soldiers is just a very lonely man in a big bloody field

— Joe Abercrombie

Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit.

— Joe Abercrombie

Empathy? What’s that?” Gloria winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. “It’s a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.

— Joe Abercrombie

Enough pain makes a coward of anyone.

— Joe Abercrombie

Every war carries within it the seeds of the next.

— Joe Abercrombie

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. Furthermore, it was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. Furthermore, it was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. Furthermore, it was high ideals, even, and low methods.

— Joe Abercrombie

Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precise. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency.

— Joe Abercrombie

Few indeed are those who get a choice. We do as we are told. We stand or fall beside those who were born near to us, who look as we do, who speak the same words, and all the while we know as little of the reasons why as does the dust we return to.

— Joe Abercrombie

Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.

— Joe Abercrombie