The air was heavy with the smell of leather and dust, of old parchment and binding glue. It smelled of secrets.

I spoke it soft, but close enough to brush against her lips. I spoke it quiet, but near enough so that the sound of it went twining through her hair. I spoke it hard and firm and dark and sweet.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

She reached up and lay her hand on my cheek. "You have the sweetest face," she said, looking at me dreamily. "It's like the perfect kitchen." I fought not to smile. This was the delirium. She'd fade in and out of it before the profound exhaustion dragged her down into unconsciousness. If you see someone spouting nonsense to themselves in an alleyway in Tarbean, odds are they're not actually crazy, just a sweet-eater deranged by too much denner. "A kitchen?" "Yes," she said. "Everything matches and the sugar bowl is right where it should be.

The boy grows upward, but the girl grows up.

You can't write good characters if you can't imagine what it's like being in another person's skin. And if you can imagine that, you naturally want other people's lives to be better. You want to make that happen.

Half a King is my favorite book by Joe Abercrombie so far, and that's saying something.