Literary Birthday – 31 December – Joe Abercrombie

10 Quotes

1. Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.
2. The more you learn, the more you realise how little you know. Still, the struggle itself is worthwhile. Knowledge is the root of power, after all.
3. Pick your enemies more carefully then your friends, they will be with you longer.
4. I got into reading a lot of noir and a lot of thrillers as well, and I really admired the plotting about those and the way that they can surprise you. And obviously to surprise people and to have twists in the tale, you have to plan quite carefully.
5. I span the entire geek spectrum.
6. The only difference between war and murder is the number of dead.
7. Fearlessness is a fool’s boast, to my mind. The only men with no fear in them are dead, or the soon to be dead, maybe. Fear teaches you caution, and respect for your enemy, and to avoid sharp edges used in anger. All good things in their place, believe me. Fear can bring you out alive, and that’s the very best anyone can hope for from any fight. Every man who’s worth a damn feels fear. It’s the use you make of it that counts.
8. Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than live with the fear of it.
9. 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.
10. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.

Joe Abercrombie is a British fantasy writer and film editor. He is the author of The First Law trilogy: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings.

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joe_Abercrombie_at_Swecon_October_2012.jpg

Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: Literary Birthday Calendar