Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2)

by Joe Abercrombie

Heinrich Heine

A committed optimist might have called the place a dive.

a good description of a few places I've been...

First, always do your best to look the coward, the weakling, the fool.

Silence is a warrior’s best armour, the saying goes.

‘Second, never take an enemy lightly, however much the dullard he seems.

Respect costs you nothing, and nothing gets a man killed quicker than confidence.’

‘Third, watch your opponent as close as you can, and listen to opinions if you’re given them, but once you’ve got your plan in mind, you fix on it and let nothing sway you.

Delay is the parent of disaster,

‘Course. Doing better next time. That’s what life is.’

They alone seemed self-sufficient, and so their forge had become his refuge. A noisy, and a crowded, and a smoky refuge, no doubt, but no less sweet for that. He preferred it immeasurably to being with the Prince and his staff. Here among the criminals it was more . . . honest.

grumbling his way through the darkness. He stopped a moment and looked up, arms folded round himself for warmth. The sky was perfectly clear, the stars prickling bright, spread across the blackness like shining dust.

You don’t pick your family, you take what you’re given and you make the best of it.’

You don’t pick your family. You make the best of it.

‘That sounds like a challenge.’

Self-pity was for children and halfwits.

You treat folk the way you’d want to be treated, and you can’t go far wrong. That’s what my father told me.

My experience? You get what you give, in the end.’

You get what you give, in the long run, and manners cost nothing.

Pride and shame, neither one will feed you.

‘Expect nothing and you’ll get nothing.’

‘Evil?’ Bayaz snorted his contempt. ‘A word for children. A word the ignorant use for those who disagree with them.

‘At the beginning?’ ventured his apprentice. ‘Where else should a man ever start?’

‘The seeds of the past bear fruit in the present,’

There was no such thing as luck. Luck was a word idiots used to explain the consequences of their own rashness, and selfishness, and stupidity. More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.

so very true...

Only friends get left behind. Enemies are always at your heels.

‘We are leaders. War is what happens when we fail. Or are pushed into failure by the rash and the foolish. Victory is better than defeat, but . . . not by much.

‘How outrageously noble of you!’