The First Law Trilogy

by Joe Abercrombie

Vengeance can feel fine, but it’s a luxury. It doesn’t fill your belly, or keep the rain off.

‘Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us. Self-pity goes with selfishness, and there is nothing more to be deplored in a leader than that. Selfishness belongs to children, and to halfwits. A great leader puts others before himself. You would be surprised how acting so makes it easier to bear one’s own troubles. In order to act like a king, one need only treat everyone else like one.’

‘Dead?’ West stared at him. ‘How?’ ‘It’s a battle, ain’t it? Dead men are the point o’ the fucking exercise.’

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? You have to be realistic.