The Wisdom of Crowds (The Age of Madness #3)

by Joe Abercrombie

“The thing about history is you don’t know what the right side is till long afterwards, and by then it hardly matters.”

lately? Wisdom is not at a premium, madness is the fashion, the balance sheets are all torn up and the friends that were assets have become liabilities.”

“Threats for tomorrow don’t cut very deep when today is so damn threatening.

“I’m shot,” whimpered the one with the arrow. “We see. Where was I?”

Judge was trouble made flesh. The monster off the leash. She was madness, and fire, and violence, and all the things he’d told himself he didn’t want. But here’s the sorry truth—if you really don’t want a thing, you don’t have to keep telling yourself so.

Once, out in the Far Country, I met a fellow called Lamb, who had travelled hundreds of miles, facing down Ghosts and mercenaries

“They’re monsters,” Orso heard her whisper. “I almost wish they were,” he muttered. “That would be easier. But they’re just people.” “They’re the worst people I ever saw.” “Of course they are. We hanged all the best ones. The ones who might have helped, might have compromised, might have built bridges, we left dangling over the road to Valbeck. Of course they are cruel, and greedy, and brutal. Those are the lessons we taught. That was the example we set.”

“I am sketching. For a painting.” Vick frowned towards the bonfire, the ragged figures warming their hands, the Burners dragging people from the buildings, the Constables emptying out the cellar that had been a bank. “You want to paint this?” “Future generations might never believe that it happened.” She blew some yellow hair out of her face with a smoky breath and went back to sketching, charcoal hissing on paper. “Then it might happen again.”

“History is not the story of battles between right and wrong, but between one man’s right and another’s. Evil is not the opposite of good. It is what we call another man’s notion of good when it differs from ours.”

“As a man who’s been cast as both hero and villain, you should know better’n anyone, Jonas Steepfield—the hero’s whoever wins.”

Her mother had always warned her a man is judged by his best moment, a woman by her worst.

The past isn’t made of facts, not really, just stories people tell to make themselves feel better. To make themselves look better.

“Guess I thought you’d changed.” “I like to think so. But I am still me. You needed a nudge in the right direction. I gave you one. Now you are a hero.” Her eyes were very hard. “You could just as easily have ended up the villain.”