Joe Abercrombie
Joe Abercrombie
Joe Abercrombieis a British fantasy writer and film editor. He is the author of The First Law trilogy and other related works of fantasy. In 2014 he published Half a King, the first book in his new Shattered Sea series, which won the 2015 Locus Award for best Young Adult book...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
given make-the-best-of-it our-family
You don’t pick your family, you take what you’re given and you make the best of it.
eye forget easy
It is easy to forget how much you have, when your eyes are always fixed on what you have not.
people taught villain
If life has taught me one thing, it's that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.
long choices matter
Sometimes it doesn't matter too much what choice you make, as long as you make it quick and stick to it.
war fighting winning
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.
book character thinking
I think the further away you get from completing a book, the more responses you see to it from readers, the more your own tastes and opinions shift and the more you start to see things you could have written differently in the detail, or done differently on the broader scale of plot and character.
mind possibility states
Armour... is part of a state of mind... in which you admit the possibility... of being hit.
men rings
Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.
children war crime
Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.
jobs war men
Only it’s just the same. In fact, do you know, because of all that pressure, and worry, and fear, it’s worse. There aren’t many men who think clearest when the stakes are highest. So people are even stupider in a war than the rest of the time. Thinking about how they’ll dodge the blame, or grab the glory, or save their skins, rather than about what will actually work There’s no job that forgives stupidity more than soldiering. No job that encourages it more.
lying irrelevance people
Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.
courage disappointment past
That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It's those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit, that prosper.
wise ignorant funny-travel
Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.
mistake teaching learning
I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn to stop making them.