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

by Joe Abercrombie

The course of his life might turn on the next few moments, if he could find the right words, and make himself say them.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter too much what choice you make, as long as you make it quick and stick to it.

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

“You’re right, most likely, but it’s better to do it—” “Than to live with the fear of it.”

“My father never was the same after that. He’d nothing in him any more. I spent a lot of years dreaming of killing you, Bloody-Nine.” Logen nodded, slowly. “Well. You’ll never be alone with that dream.”

When was it exactly that I became… this? By small degrees, I suppose. One act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and find that we are… this.

Ah, well. I would love to spend more time on philosophy, but I have officials to bribe, and noblemen to blackmail, and votes to rig, and secretaries to murder, and lovers to threaten. So many knives to juggle. And as one clatters to the filthy floor, another must go up, blade spinning razor sharp above our heads. It never gets any easier.

You can never have too many knives, his father had told him. Unless they’re pointed at you, and by people who don’t like you much.

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

Now it is like a great boulder hurtling down a slope. They dare not stand in its way in case they are squashed to gravy. So they crowd in behind, and add their own weight to it, and hope to snatch the scraps up afterward.

It is not how you die, but how you lived, that counts.

It’s hard to be done a favour by a man you hate. It’s hard to hate him so much afterwards. Losing an enemy can be worse than losing a friend, if you’ve had him for long enough.

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?

“The only difference between war and murder is the number of the dead.”

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

There’s nothing worth less than what men think of you after you’re back in the mud.

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

“If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. 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.

Courage can come from many places, and be made of many things, and yesterday’s coward can become tomorrow’s hero in an instant if the time is right.

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.

Now is the time for hard heads, hard hearts and even harder edges. Time to cut the truth out.

The chances are none of us will live out the day in any case, and dead men can afford to be merciful. The only kind of men that can, in fact.

A man can be fearless on his own doorstep, against enemies he understands, but take him long miles over the salty sea to strange places he never dreamed of, he’ll take fright at every empty doorway.

The older you get, the more swiftly the years pass. It’s easy to forget how quickly people die.”

There was no one here but him, now, anyway. Him and the dead. But maybe that’s what happens once the fighting stops, to a man who knows nothing but fighting. He fights himself.

“This is how most of us go, isn’t it? No final charge. No moment of glory. We just… fall slowly apart.”