Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold
24 quotes
"Every war carries within it the seeds of the next."
"The world is all change, my friend. We all would like to go back, but the past is done. We must look forwards. We must change ourselves, however painful it may be, or be left behind."
"One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things."
"Shivers heaved out a sigh. “Just trying to make tomorrow that bit better than today is all. I’m one of those … you’ve got a word for it, don’t you?”“Idiots?”He looked sideways at her. “It was a different one I had in mind.”“Optimists.”“That’s the one. I’m an optimist.”“How’s it working out for you?”“Not great, but I keep hoping.”“That’s optimists. You bastards never learn."
"A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success."
"Are you entirely sure of that knot?' asked Morveer. 'There is no place in the plan for a lengthy drop'.'Twenty-eight strides', said Friendly.'What?''The drop'.A brief pause, 'That is not helpful'."
"The memories of our glories fade, and rot away into half-arsed anecdotes, thin and unconvincing as some other bastard's lies. The failures, the disappointments, the regrets, they stay raw as the moments they happened."
"Men are brittle, I reckon. They don't bend into new shapes. They get broken into them. Crushed into them."
"Monza never had understood why getting out a tit or two made for a better painting. But painters seemed to think it did, so tits is what you got."
"Memories sharp enough to cut himself on - the smells, the sounds, the feel of the air on his skin, the desperate hope and mad anger."
"It's a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you are lying on your death bead, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes."
"A man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he find entirely beyond sufferance"
"I apologise, your Highness. Murder can be a painful business."
"Bravery is the dead man’s virtue."
"It was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back."
"Enough pain makes a coward of anyone."
"I've made peace with myself.Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win.Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting."
"Some men laugh easily. It makes them winning dinner companions."
"Have a smile for breakfast, you'll be shitting joy by lunch."
"Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave."
"Mercy and cowardice are the same," she snapped out. "But you want their land, not their lives, no? Dead men can't obey."
"To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike."
"The sunrise was the colour of bad blood. It leaked out of the east and stained the dark sky red, marked the scraps of the cloud with stolen gold. Underneath it the road twisted up the mountainside towards the fortress of Fontezarmo - a cluster of sharp towers, ash-black again the wounded heavens. The sunrise was red, black and gold.The colours of their profession."
"You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza."That brought a smile to the corner of her mouth. The corner he couldn't see. "Well. Facts are facts."