Best Served Cold

by Joe Abercrombie

‘One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.’

may be no kind of fisher, but I’ve always had a talent for making men bleed. Best put that stick down before I make you fucking eat it.’

‘What happens when you get old, though, and no one wants you no more? Seems to me all you’re doing is putting off the despair and leaving a pack of regrets behind you.’ Below Cosca’s mask, his smile had a sad twist. ‘That’s all any of us are doing, my friend. Every business is the same, and ours is no different. Soldiering, killing, whatever you want to call it. No one wants you when you get old.’

To the starving man, bread is beautiful. To the homeless man, a roof is beautiful. To the drunkard, wine is beautiful. Only those who want for nothing else need find beauty in a lump of rock.

You make yourself too hard, you make yourself brittle too. Crack once, crack all to pieces.