What’s 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?

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

Fools boast of what they will do. Heroes do it.

Sometimes men change for the better. Sometimes men change for the worse. And often, very often, given time and opportunity . . .’ He waved his flask around for a moment, then shrugged. ‘They change back.

It is easy to forget how much you have, when your eyes are always fixed on what you have not.

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?

'The Blade Itself' was my first book. Probably I should've tried a few short stories first, but for some reason I decided to begin with Everest.