Last Argument of Kings (The First Law, #3)

by Joe Abercrombie

It can be a fearsome weapon, patience. One that few men ever learn to use.

People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.

He was gradually starting to realise that the more powerful a man became, the fewer choices he really had.

If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?

But you can’t truly hate a man without loving him first, and there’s always a trace of that love left over.

Strange. However much pain we experience, we never become used to it. We always scramble to escape it. We never become resigned to more.

I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.”

It can be a terrible curse for a man to get everything he ever dreamed of. If the shining prizes turn out somehow to be empty baubles, he is left without even his dreams for comfort.

Trust. It was a word that only liars used. A word the truthful had no need of.

What good does blame do? We all do what we have to. I gave up looking for reasons a long time ago.”

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes.” Cosca stretched his chin up and scratched at his scabby neck. “The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.” “Huh,” grunted Glokta as he laboured up the steps. A curse we all have to bear. Round and round in circles we go, clutching at successes that we never grasp, endlessly tripping over the same old failures. Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.