Sharp Ends (First Law World #7)

by Joe Abercrombie

after all the shit that had been done to her, why she still felt the need to do small kindnesses. Maybe because of all the shit that had been done to her. Maybe there was some stubborn stone in her, like the stone in a date, that refused to let all the shit that had been done to her make her into shit.

There’s no style of contempt like the stuff one kind of savage has for another,

‘But it is easy to speak of the past, impossible to go there. I am powerful in ways you can only dream, yet I am still a prisoner of what I have done. I can never escape the cell I have made for myself. Things are what they are.’

‘If you have to tell someone you are furious, and then, furthermore, that you mean it, your fury has failed to achieve its desired effect.’

Surprise is like virginity. You only get the one chance at using it, and that normally turns out a crushing disappointment.

This wasn’t fantasies, it was life. And life had a habit of kicking her in the cunt.

But what were her choices? If you want to be a fine new person with a fine new life you’ve got to put the person you were behind you, like a snake sheds its skin. You’ve got to stop picking through your hoard of hurts and grievances like a miser through his coins, set ’em down and allow yourself to go free. You’ve got to forgive and you’ve got to trust, not because anyone else deserves it, but because you do.