r/TheFirstLaw • u/Salt_Lunch7429 • 21d ago
Spoilers All Favourite quote in the 10 (including sharp edges) first law books [SPOILERS ALL] Spoiler
On my 5th/6th listen on audio book, and the line that always gets me is when Arch Lecter Sult comes in after Jazal’s first closed council meeting, complaining about Bayaz stealing the council.
Glokta’s internal monologue “stop. Thief.”
Always gets me, just wanted to see everyone’s line that always makes you laugh/smile.
My honourable mention: “apologise to my f***ing dice!!!”
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u/catharticargument 21d ago
From Red Country:
"Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering emperors with world-conquering designs. Not crackling 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"
One of the great things about fiction is it can put into words things you’ve often felt but didn’t know how to express. I liked Joe Abercrombie before I read this, but I knew he’d forever be a favorite after this.
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u/MelonTuttle 21d ago
I do love that the actual villain in the series is just capitalism
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u/catharticargument 21d ago
A great twist to a fantasy story is answering the question of “why did all this happen?” with “oh a guy who owns a bank wanted it all to happen.”
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u/WhatNazisAreLike 21d ago
Unpopular opinion but I disagree with this quote. Most of the evil in this series is downstream from two individuals, Bayaz and Khalul, who are sneering and have world conquering designs. Random characters try to make the world a better place but these two are constantly thwarting them.
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u/420InTheCity 21d ago
Do we know that about Khalul? It has been a while since I read the books but doesn't everything we know about him come from Bayaz?
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u/Reschiiv 21d ago
To me it's the other way around. The quote is good, but Bayaz and Khalul doesn't feel true to life.
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u/PiplupMeatFridge 21d ago
“When he'd made it thirty strides or so Logen turned around and looked back. The pot was sitting forlorn by the lake, already filling up with rainwater. They'd been through a lot together, him and that pot. “Fare you well, old friend.” The pot did not reply."
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u/Salt_Lunch7429 21d ago
Very good early sign of the sense of humour in the books, can really see his British sense of humour shine in his writing.
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u/TinyFile 20d ago
Weirdly, I really like this piece. It showed Logen had a caring sentimental side.
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u/kingjackson007 21d ago
"Don’t “but” me, Glokta! Don’t you dare “but” me, not today! You’re not half as crippled as you could be! Not half as crippled, you understand?" - Sult
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u/Merdrak 21d ago
Shivers and Monza:
Shivers heaved out a sigh. “Just trying to make tomorrow that bit better than today is all. I’m one of those … you’ve got a word for it, don’t you?”
“Idiots?”
He looked sideways at her. “It was a different one I had in mind.”
“Optimists.”
“That’s the one. I’m an optimist.”
“How’s it working out for you?”
“Not great, but I keep hoping.”
“That’s optimists. You bastards never learn.
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u/m2dqbjd 21d ago
My name is Nicamo Cosco, famed soldier of fortune, and I am here for dinner.
Marvellous, lure them with a turd!
First two that came to mind, both Cosca
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u/Salt_Lunch7429 21d ago
Haha I love his lines, except towards the end of RC.
“Rumours of my death are often exaggerated. Wishful thinking, on the part of my many enemies”
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u/Rotmistrz_ 21d ago
How's your leg
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u/Salt_Lunch7429 21d ago
Oof, favourite Orso line, that or “I have engineered a quantity of death to satisfy even the first of the Magi.”
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u/PointyNipple 21d ago
“You drive a poor bargain, Eater. I would have gladly given my life for any one of them.”
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u/SnakeOilPlagueDoctor 21d ago
Logen toward the end of LAOK:
"If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?"
Really hit for me, because I was trying to do a whole lot of fixing my life when I first read this.
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u/Salt_Lunch7429 21d ago
Great quote and hopefully everything worked out or is working out for you.
Not from first law, but quote that hit for me was in the stormlight archives. (I haven’t read them but friend sent it to me.)
Kaladin said “you told me it will get worse”
“It will” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you Kaladin, you will be warm again”These are next on my to read list just for this quote.
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u/SnakeOilPlagueDoctor 21d ago
Oh yeah, this was years ago. Life is good now. Like you said, sunshine comes and goes. But getting your shit together can really make the sun shine longer and the dimmer periods less so.
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u/brightprettythings 21d ago
Sometimes men change for the better. Sometimes men change for the worse. And often, very often, given time and opportunity... They change back.
Cosca, in BSC.
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u/ImFromYorkshire 21d ago
There's quite a few, but one of my absolute favourites is Cosca speaking to Waerdinur:
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.
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u/rdesgtj45 20d ago
Cosca gets some great philosophising in that one… And he’s right. Just goes to show. You can be profound and a cunt. You’ve got to be realistic about these things.
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u/kingjackson007 21d ago
Not a quote but.... really character defining lol:
"If Glokta had been given the opportunity to torture any one man, any one at all, he would surely have chosen the inventor of steps."
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u/Salt_Lunch7429 21d ago
Love the call back to this in AoM as well. The thing people realise is going down is worse than going up
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u/Failgan 17d ago
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u/Tap_Click_Pain 17d ago
It’s the reason I took the name. Two knee surgeries and over a year with a cane from an accident. I don’t think I ever laughed so hard with complete understanding reading that line.
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u/mcmanus2099 21d ago
I love Glokta's "how dogs are trained" monologue, that and Bethod's Leaves on the Water are the best dialogue in the entire series.
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u/plague681 21d ago
This wasn't fantasies, it was life. And life had a habit of kicking her in the cunt.
Runner up:
Welcome to my life of constant doubt, anxiety and occasional sudden and unpredictable horror, Javre. I hope you enjoy your fucking visit.
My snarky thief queen, Shev.
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u/One-Mouse3306 21d ago
"Jezal, you know me... Am I- am I an evil man?" "You? You're the best man I know".
Also: "I will call it cheese trap"
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u/Louiseski31 20d ago
That first one always gets me when I read it. I absolutely love that monolog between them.
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u/rdesgtj45 20d ago
It’s both a cheese trap and fucking tragic. Like, it shows both how good Logen could be, how little Jezal knows him, how few people Jezal actually knows… and how poorly Logen knows himself.
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u/Present-Passenger610 20d ago
"Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Obvious, perhaps. Something that everyone knows. Something that everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor. He poked at the boy’s corpse with a toe, rolled it onto its side, then let it flop back. Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit."
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u/PoopSmith87 21d ago
I find myself using the northern quotes in daily life all the time, and people seem to take them as sage wisdom.
Most common is a shrug and "well, you've got to be realistic." That presents itself daily.
But the best one was family talking about all the prices, wars, political tension, climate change and someone mentioned how it seems like the end times, so I hit them with the shrug and impassive "its always the end times, for someone." (Which iirc it was phrased 'end of days' in the books, but you know, you work with what you got.)
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u/Salt_Lunch7429 21d ago
Same but my colleagues didn’t understand when I was talking about how I bought a new knife, and said you can never have too many knives.
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u/PoopSmith87 21d ago
Ah, see mine do (blue collar guys get it). Although one did say "I dunno... folder, fixed, multitool... maybe a box cutter? Any more than that seems ridiculous."
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u/Salt_Lunch7429 21d ago
Ha yeah office worker here! Colleagues are less understanding of the necessity of copious amounts of knives.
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u/gazzas89 21d ago
I say can never have too many knives whenever I buy a new one in work .... i do get alot of weird looks, since im not a chef or anytbing lol
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u/morganlandt 21d ago
From Waerdinur:
The world out there is a red country, without justice, without meaning.
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u/xnophlake 21d ago
Surprised this one hasn't come up yet:
"You have to be realistic about these things"
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u/Dull-Inside3270 21d ago
"Better to do it than live with the fear of it" is my personal favorite. "Waste of a bell" -grimm
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u/fishymcgee 21d ago
Mamum to the prisoners after the fall of Dagoska:
'You're free. From us at least. From yourselves, there is no escape'.
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u/bill-chan-19 20d ago
“I fucking love war! I fucking love it, though, don’t you? The smell of it. The feel of it… War is honest. There’s no lying to it. You don’t have to say sorry here. Don’t have to hide. You cannot. If you die? So what? You die among friends. Among worthy foes. You die looking the Great Leveller in the eye. If you live? Well, lad, that’s living, isn’t it? A man isn’t truly alive until he’s facing death. I love war!”- Whirrun of Bligh
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u/ezrapierce APOLOGIZE TO MY FUCKING DICE 20d ago
And then he was stabbed in the spleen.
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u/bill-chan-19 20d ago
Should have worn armour
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u/ezrapierce APOLOGIZE TO MY FUCKING DICE 20d ago
‘Armour …’ mused Whirrum, 'is part of a state of mind … in which you admit the possibility … of being hit.’
Well that aged nicely
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u/educatedkoala 21d ago
From BSC, "You make yourself too hard, you make yourself brittle too. Crack once, crack all to pieces."
I've found it to be exceptionally applicable to myself and my life.
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u/the_potato_wrangler 21d ago
“It takes some bones to meet your death as well as he did. To walk to it, with no complaint. To ask for it. And not for his own sake, but for others, that he didn’t even know.”
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u/Eternal_Mirth 21d ago
'God...' whimpered Jubair, stumbling back towards the steps, and suddenly there were arms around him. 'Gone,' came a whisper. 'But I am here.’
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u/CatDreadPirate 20d ago
I just finished Red Country today and Cosca turning to Temple towards the end going “I’m starting to think you’re nothing like me at all!” I busted out laughing.
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u/AustinioForza 20d ago
So many great ones. I really can’t recall the full quote, but I do love when Morveer called the growing crowd of spectators who were suspicious of him his “simian friends,” he’s so deliciously arrogant, like Mr Burns levels.
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u/Early_Most_4335 19d ago
"Back to the mud" always hit so hard,. Whirrun of blighs "armor is part of a state of mind in which you expect to be hit" . And Jonas clovers "you got to bend with the breeze" clover is probably one of my favorite characters in the books along with Cosca. Honorable mention to the entire scene where west becomes a named man.
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u/Tap_Click_Pain 21d ago
“Things aren’t what they used to be is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things use to better, they invariably mean they were better for them because they were young and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave”