Give Method a kick from me, once you have him under your boot."" That I will, unless he gets me under his."" Never easy, kicking upwards.

— Joe Abercrombie

Have a smile for breakfast, you'll be shitting joy by lunch.

— Joe Abercrombie

He blamed every fucker available excepting, of course, the one who was actually to blame, the one sitting in his saddle and getting colder, hungrier, and more lost with every unpleasant moment. ‘Shit!’ he roared at nothing.

— Joe Abercrombie

He is dead and I, the self-serving coward that I am, still live. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Something everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think that when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor. 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

He looked around at that one room, and the few things in it. He'd always thought retiring would be going back to his life after some nightmare pause. Some stretch of exile in the land of the dead. Now it came to him that all his life worth living had happened while he was holding a sword. Standing alongside his dozen. Laughing with Whir run, and Back, and Wonderful. Clasping hands with his crew before the fight, knowing he'd die for them and they for him. The trust, the brotherhood, the love, the knit closer than family. Standing by Three trees on the walls of Faith, roaring their defiance at Method's great army. The day he charged at the Concur. And at Hundred. And in the High Places, even though they lost. The day he earned his name. Even the day he got his brothers killed. Even when he'd stood at the top of the Heroes as the rain came down, watching the Union come, knowing every dragged out moment might be the last. Like Whir run said - you can't live more than that. Certainly not by fixing a chair.

— Joe Abercrombie

Hurray', shouted Gloria. 'Porridge again!' He looked over at the motionless Practical. 'Porridge and honey, better than money, everything's funny, with porridge and honey!

— Joe Abercrombie

I apologize, your Highness. Murder can be a painful business.

— Joe Abercrombie

If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?

— Joe Abercrombie

I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.

— Joe Abercrombie

I'm a fucking coward."" Maybe." Craw jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Whir run's corpse. "There's a hero. Tell me who's better off.

— Joe Abercrombie