The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)

by Joe Abercrombie

Jezal had often observed that the ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company.

Better to have it, and not want it, than to want it, and not have it. Far, far better. You have to be realistic about these things.

Different men have different ways, Logen had told him once, and you have to have fear to have courage.

“Was it Stolicus who said the ground must be a general’s best friend, or it becomes his worst enemy?”

The tree is only as strong as its root, and knowledge is the root of power.”

The more you learn, the more you realise how little you know. Still, the struggle itself is worthwhile. Knowledge is the root of power, after all.”

The great wage secret wars for power and wealth, and they call it government. Wars of words, and tricks, and guile, but no less bloody for that.

But that was civilisation, so far as Logen could tell. People with nothing better to do, dreaming up ways to make easy things difficult.

conversation of the drunk is only interesting to the drunk. A few glasses of wine can be the difference between finding a man a hilarious companion or an insufferable moron.

friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time, and had never got anywhere. He had no interest in that arrangement.

“No one cares about the past any more,” he whispered. “They don’t see that you can’t have a future without a past.”