Red Country Quotes

“Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence, and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“People have often accused me of inconsistency but i feel that i have always, at any given junction, done the same thing. Exactly what i pleased.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“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.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“The trouble with running is wherever you run to, there you are.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“If there was a God, the world seemed exactly the way it would be if there wasn’t one.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“One day you're something, so promising and full o' dares, so big the world's too small a place to hold you. Then, 'fore you know it, you're old, and you realise all them things you had in mind you'll never get to. All them doors you felt too big to fit through have already shut. Only one left open and it leads to nothing but nothing.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“You stick a bunch of drunken murderers together, ain't long before some turn to thieving, then to lying, then to bad language, and pretty soon to sobriety, raising families and making an honest living.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Lorsen shook his head in amazement. 'You truly are disgusting.'
'I would be the last to disagree, but you fail to see that you are worse. No man capable of greater evil than the one who thinks himself in the right. No purpose more evil than the higher purpose. I freely admit I am a villain. That's why you hired me. But I am no hypocrite.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Unsheathe your swords!' He considered that. 'Or cheaper weapons! Let us ... do some good!”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“What are you going to do?’ whispered Temple.
‘There was a time I’d have gone charging over there without a thought for the costs and got bloody.’ Lamb lifted the glass and looked at it for a moment. ‘But my father always said patience is the king of virtues. A man has to be realistic. Has to be.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Wait. Think. Prepare.’ Lamb swallowed the last measure and bared his teeth at the glass. ‘Then get bloody.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“If you wanted to see my cock that badly, you could just have asked.'
'No doubt a thing o' haunting beauty but i came for something else.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Cosca smiled up at the dragon, hands on hips. ‘It certainly is a remarkable curiosity. A magnificent relic. But against what is already boiling across the plains? The legion of the dumb? The merchants and farmers and makers of trifles and filers of papers? The infinite tide of greedy little people?’ He waved his hat towards the dragon. ‘Such things as this are worthless as a cow against a swarm of ants. There will be no place in the world to come for the magical, the mysterious, the strange. They will come to your sacred places and build . . . tailors’ shops. And dry-goods emporia. And lawyers’ offices. They will make of them bland copies of everywhere else.’ The old mercenary scratched thoughtfully at his rashy neck. ‘You can wish it were not so. I wish it were not so. But it is so. I tire of lost causes. The time of men like me is passing. The time of men like you?’ He wiped a little blood from under his fingernails. ‘So long passed it might as well have never been.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“She poured out a measure but Temple declined. 'Drink and I have had some long and painful conversations and found we simply can't agree.'

'Drink and I can't agree either.' She shrugged and tossed it down herself. 'But we keep on having the argument.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“-Would it help if I said I was very drunk?
Brachio shook his head.
- We all were.
-Shitty childhood?
-Mummy used to leave me in a cupboard.
-Shitty adulthood?
-Whose isn't?”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Inquisitor Lorsen's thin lip curled. "There is truly nothing in you of what separates man from animal, is there? You are bereft of conscience. An utter absence of morality. You have no principle beyond the selfish."
Cosca's face hardened as he leaned forwards. "Perhaps when you have faced as many disappointments and suffered as many betrayals as I, you will see it - there is no principle beyond the selfish, Inquisitor, and men are animals. Conscience is a burden we choose to bear. Morality is the lie we tell ourselves to make its bearing easier. There have been many times in my life when I have wished it was not so. But it is so.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Summers past love company, seems every time you turn around there's more o' the bastards at your back.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Better to have steel to hand and find no trouble than find yourself in trouble with no steel to hand.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Conscience and the cock-rot are hardly equivalent,’ snapped Lorsen.
‘Indeed,’ said Cosca, significantly. ‘The cock-rot is rarely fatal.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“In violent times folk like to kneel to violent men. In peaceful times they remember they’re happier standing.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“A man with a missing eye after a man with a missing finger. There’s a song in there somewhere, I reckon.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Prickomo fucking cocksca. That bastard old arsehole-fucker.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“There was a time he’d heard tales of Dab Sweet and he’d stuck thumbs in his belt and chin to the sky and tricked himself that was how his life had been. But the years scraped by hard as ever and he got less and the stories more ’til they were tales of a man he’d never met succeeding at what he’d never have dreamed of attempting.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“The Inquisitor waited for silence. "Do you believe in anything?"

"Not if I can help it. Belief alone is nothing to be proud of, Inquisitor. Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Nostalgia was becoming a favoured hobby of his. Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“A man so slimy he would have found employment as axle grease.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“severed heads,' Cosca was explaining, 'never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic, sensibility,They can make a point a great deal more eloquently then those still attached.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“i want...
i want a chance to do it all again. To do it... right.' Tears showed in the Old Man's eyes. 'How ever did it go so wrong, Temple? I had so many advantages. So many opportunities. All squandered. All slipped away like sand through a glass. So many disappointments...'
'Most of them you brought on yourself'
'Of course.' Cosca gave a ragged sigh. 'But they're the ones that hurt the worst.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

“Enough to make a man believe in God,’ said Temple. ‘And that He’s somewhere else.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country