The First Law Trilogy Quotes

“Doing better next time. That’s what life is.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“But some things have to be done. It’s better to do them, than to live with the fear of them.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“A few glasses of wine can be the difference between finding a man a hilarious companion or an insufferable moron.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“Come,” he whispered. They all were welcome.
They scattered for the racks, seizing their spiked swords, and their sharp axes, and the Bloody-Nine laughed to watch them. Armed or not, their death was a thing already decided. It was written into the cavern in lines of fire and lines of shadow. Now he would write it in lines of blood. “Die!” he roared, and the blade made circles, savage and beautiful, the letter on the metal burning red and leaving bright trails behind. And where the circles passed everything would be made right. The Shanka would scream and gibber, and the pieces of them would scatter, and they would be sliced and divided as neatly as meat on the butcher’s block
The Bloody-Nine showed his teeth, and smiled to be free, and to see the good work done so well. He knocked a barbed sword from a Flathead’s hand, seized it by the scruff of the neck and forced its face down into the channel where the molten steel flowed, furious yellow, and its head hissed and bubbled, shooting out stinking steam.
“Burn!” laughed the Bloody-Nine, and the ruined corpses, and their gaping wounds, and their fallen weapons, and the boiling bright iron laughed with him.
Only the Shanka did not laugh. They knew their hour was come.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“lies. The hardest kind to see through. The kind you tell yourself.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings

“The blade itself incites to deeds of violence’ Homer”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings

“Nothing to it. You treat folk the way you’d want to be treated, and you can’t go far wrong.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings

“There are few ills a good cup of tea won’t help with.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“You don’t pick your family, you take what you’re given and you make the best of it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings

“Sand dan Glokta, shield to the helpless. Is it ever too late to be . . . a good man?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“Life is the misery we endure between dissappointments”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“The best lessons one teaches oneself.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“Perhaps we’ll have some answers, at least, before the end. I always dreamed of dying well-informed.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings

“He had discovered early in his military career that if one has an effective and experienced officer above, coupled with effective and experienced soldiers below, one need do, and know, nothing.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“Children? Hope, and prospects, and all that happy life ahead of them? I despise the little bastards!”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“Do you have to?’ he muttered, looking her right in one yellow eye. ‘Have to what?’ ‘Be a cunt. Do you have to?’ She frowned at him for a moment, opened her mouth, paused, then shrugged her shoulders.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“Couldn’t find a comfortable position to put his fruits in. Always squashed, however often he jammed his hand down inside his belt to move ’em.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“I do declare,’ said Brint, ‘if I didn’t think the Major would stick me with his sword, I’d be tempted to stick his sister with mine, eh?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“Jezal shrugged pleasantly. ‘It’s not my fault you’re shit.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there’s not a man of them I wouldn’t trust my mother to.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘She’s been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“You have to love the small things, when you’ve
nothing else.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself / Before They Are Hanged / Last Argument Of Kings

“letting”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“The only thing worse than a city full of people is a city with no people at all.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“He looked around his quarters. Or Davoust’s quarters. That’s where an old wizard terrified me in the middle of the night. That’s where I watched the city burn. That’s where I was nearly eaten by a fourteen-year-old girl. Ah, the happy memories . . .”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy

“She tipped back her head and swilled down the last of her wine. ‘Having fucked the groom is really no excuse for missing a wedding, you know.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings