Joe Abercrombie

You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza."That brought a smile to the corner of her mouth. The corner he couldn't see. "Well. Facts are facts.

On the battlefield there are no rules.

Give Bethod a kick from me, once you have him under your boot.""That I will, unless he gets me under his.""Never easy, kicking upwards.

I've made peace with myself.Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win.Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting.

Luck is a woman. She's drawn to those that least deserve her.

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.

The sunrise was the colour of bad blood. It leaked out of the east and stained the dark sky red, marked the scraps of the cloud with stolen gold. Underneath it the road twisted up the mountainside towards the fortress of Fontezarmo - a cluster of sharp towers, ash-black again the wounded heavens. The sunrise was red, black and gold.The colours of their profession.

What__ the difference? Fill a hundred pits with dead Northmen, congratulations, have a parade! Kill one man in the same uniform as you? A crime. A murder. Worse than despicable. Are we not all men? All blood and bone and dreams?

The man is a monster. The worst I have ever seen, in fact, since I last looked in the mirror. The truth? I am rotting too. I am buried alive, and already rotting. If I was not such a coward I would kill myself, but I am, and so I must content myself with killing others in the hope that one day, if I can only wade deep enough in blood, I will come out clean.

Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.

Some men you stick to right off. But it's those that take time to stick that stick longest.

The best steel doesn't always shine the brightest.

To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike.

Mercy and cowardice are the same," she snapped out. "But you want their land, not their lives, no? Dead men can't obey.

You want to be merciful. To stand in the light. I understand it. I admire it. But, my queen...Only the victors can be merciful.

So the fox killed his brother, the wolf. (Mother Scaer)

Empathy? What__ that?_ Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. __t__ a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.

Vengeance is a way of clinging to what we have lost. A wedge in the Last Door, and through the crack we can still glimpse the faces of the dead. We strain towards it with all our being, break every rule to have it, but when we clutch it, there is nothing there. Only grief.