The things we love destroy us every time, lad. Remember that.
I crossed a thousand leagues to come to you, and lost the best part of me along the way. Don’t tell me to leave.
I take no joy in mead nor meat, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once.
Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love.
Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.
Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old.
We all need to be mocked from time to time, lest we take ourselves too seriously.
If you need help bark like a dog.” – Gendry. “That’s stupid. If I need help I’ll shout help.” – Arya
…How would you like to die, Tyrion son of Tywin?””In my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a maiden’s mouth around my cock, at the age of eighty,” he replied.
Tyrion let the eunuch help him mount. “Lord Varys,” he said from the saddle, “sometimes I feel as though you are the best friend I have in King’s Landing and sometimes I feel you are my worst enemy.” “How odd. I think quite the same of you.
Nothing’ isn’t better or worse than anything. Nothing is just… nothing.” Arya Stark
Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.
People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it’s served up.
It was queer how sometimes a child’s innocent eyes can see things that grown men are blind to.
He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death.
Fat men take a cushion with them wherever they go.
The hard truths are the ones to hold tight.-The Old Bear, A Game of Thrones
It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.
Is it so far from madness to wisdom?” – Daenerys Targaryen
She had no time for sleep, with the weight of the world upon her shoulders. And she feared to dream. Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the Other, who would drag us all into his eternal night.
Why won’t they let me be? I just need to rest, that’s all, to rest and sleep some, and maybe die a little.
The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.
This was how an enemy should be dealt with: with a dagger, not a declaration.
I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.””Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?””How else? Though not till I’m done reading.
What are you doing to me?” he asked the crow, tearful. Teaching you how to fly. “I can’t fly!” You’re flying right now. “I’m falling!” Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said.
Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.
A bruise is a lesson… and each lesson makes us better.
Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come.
Be careful you don’t cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with.”Girls don’t shave’, Arya said.’Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa’s legs?
Small men oft feel a need to prove their courage with unseemly boasts,” he declared. “I doubt if he could kill a duck.”Tyrion shrugged. “Fetch the duck.
Shaga: How would you like to die, little man?Tyrion: In my bed, at the age of eighty with a belly full of wine and a woman’s mouth around my cock.
The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.
I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.
He’ll be down with the books. My old septon used to say books are dead men talking. Dead men should keep quiet is what I say. No one wants to hear a dead man’s yabber.
Before he had lost his sight, the maester had loved books as much as Samwell Tarly did. He understood the way that you could sometimes fall right into them, as if each page was a hole into another world.
I sailed up to the cold stars but they were cold no longer, and I grew bigger and bigger until I was the stars and they were me, and I was Union, and for a single solitary glittering instant I was the universe.
Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.
There’s no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it.
A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.
Robb says the man died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid.””What do you think?” his father asked.Bran thought about it. “can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?””That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him.
His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin.
When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.
My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.
Perhaps I cannot make my people good, she told herself, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad.
There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.
The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling. (Varys)
On armageddon day,’ Sandy said, ‘both armies will think they fight for good. And both of them will be wrong.
Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the other who would drag us all into the eternal light
My sister has mistaken me for a mushroom. She keeps me in the dark and feeds me shit.
And what lesson can we draw from Volantene history?”“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.
I learned long ago that it is considered rude to vomit on your brother
Well, the drums gave me headaches, the sunlight flashing on my armor cooked me up like harvest day, and those magnificent destriers shit everywhere.
A sword needs a sheath, heh, and a wedding needs a bedding.
All men are fools, and all men are knights where women are concerned.
She is not truly beautiful but something about her draws the eye.
Man wants to be the king o’ the rabbits, he best wear a pair o’ floppy ears.
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.
Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?- How else? Though not till I’m done reading.
History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.
She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and clouds above her and the rain to wash her clean.
Torches just blind you. On a clear night like this, the moon and the stars are enough.
Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.
Hard hands and no sense of humor makes for a bad marriage.
Innocence and experience make for a perfect marriage.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle Earth.
For men, the answer was always the same and never farther away than the nearest sword. For a woman, a mother, the way was stonier and harder to know.
Most of my kin are bastards,” [Tyrion] said with a wry smile, “but you’re the first I’ve had to friend.
A book can be as dangerous as a sword in the right hands
Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond.
The day will come when you need them to respect you, even fear you a little. Laughter is poison to fear.
Look at me!” he would shout as he ran laughing through the halls of Storm’s End. “Look at me, I’m a dragon,” or “Look at me, I’m a wizard,” or “Look at me, look at me, I’m the rain
You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you…
… a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.
…grief can derange even the strongest and most disciplined of minds.
She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honour, for love.
Power resides where men believe it resides. A very small man can cast a very large shadow.
No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could, nor the bones of his soul, the grey and grisly bones of his soul.
I have some devotional books you can look over. Learn to quote from them. Nothing discourages unwanted questions as much as a flow of pious bleating.(Petyr Baelish to Sansa Stark)
Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”“That is the only time a man can be brave,
A man grows weary of having no lovers but his fingers.
There was an agelessness about him, a stillness; on Roose Bolton’s face, rage and joy looked much the same.
Remember Old Nan’s stories, Bran. Remember the way she told them, the sound of her voice. So long as you do that, part of her will always be alive in you.
Children are a battle of a different sort. … A battle without banners or warhorns but no less fierce.
The hard truths are the ones to hold tight. – Old Bear
Girl or boy, we fight our battles. But the God’s let us choose our weapons.
So now you are a woman. Do you have the least idea of what that means?It means that I am now fit to be wedded and bedded (…) and to bear children for the king.
Can you drown in grief? She turned away sharply, angry with her own frailty. She had no time for the luxury of self-pity.
He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been.
A great battle is a terrible thing,” the old knight said, “but in the midst of blood and carnage, there is sometimes also beauty, beauty that could break your heart.
Then a begging brother in a tattered brown robe said a blessing on his sword, and a maid kissed his cheek. ‘They are for me,’ “Why?” He asked Pate. “What am I to them?” “A knight who remembered his vows,” the smith said.
Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths.
The living have no place at the feasts of the dead.
Words are like arrows, Arianne. Once loosed, you cannot call them back.
Words are wind, and the wind from Manderly’s mouth means no more than the wind escaping his bottom.
But words in a book were one thing. The true test came in battle.
She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened.
He cries behind his wall, I think, and no one knows, not even he. And no one will ever know, and in the end he’ll always be alone in smiling pain.
Let his sword break and his shield shatter, Sansa thought coldly as she shoved out through the doors, let his courage fail him and every man desert him.
It was a hollow victory they gave me. A crown…it was the girl I prayed them for. Your sister, safe… and mine again as she was meant to be. I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown?
These woods are as empty as you think, he had said. You cannot know what the light might summon from the darkness.
The lord of light made the sun and moon and stars to light our day, and gave us fire to keep the night at bay.
Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted her his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father’s head. Sansa would never make that mistake again.
The only wolves we got to fear are the ones wear manskin,
I have become a sour woman. I take no joy in meat nor mead, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once.
Some men are like swords, made for fighting. Hang them and they go to rust.
old stories are like old friends (…) you have to visit them from time to time.
Our enemies leave our bodies for the crows and the wolves. Our friends bury us in secret graves.
All men are fools, if truth be told, but the ones in motley are more amusing than ones with crowns.
Men come and go. They lie, or die, or leave you. A mountain is not a man, though, and a stone is a mountain’s daughter. I trust myself, and I trust my mules. I won’t fall.
The gods are blind and men see only wha they wish.
The gods are blind and men see only what they wish.
Your brother was a terrible traitor, I know, but if we start killing men at weddings they’ll be even more frightened of marriage than they are presently.
The gods are blind. And men see only what they wish.
Misery loves company, as someone unbearably trite said once.
Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.
Oh yes, it hurts at times to be alone among the stars. But it hurts a lot more to be alone at a party. A lot more.
It was pleasant to think that men still sang, even in the midst of butchery and famine.
The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother’s milk. Darkness will make you strong.
All the world knew that a maester forged his silver link when he learned the art of healing—but the world preferred to forget that men who knew how to heal also knew how to kill.
…When you’ve know me longer, you’ll learn that I mean everything I say.”“Even the lies?”“Especially the lies. Lord Petyr…
If the novels are still being read in 50 years, no one is ever going to say: ‘What’s great about that sixth book is that he met his deadline!’ It will be about how the whole thing stands up.
A son for a son, heh. But that’s a grandson…and he never was much use.” –Walder Frey
He wished he could relieve himself of his doubts and guilts half as easily.
We are one. Man, horse, lance, we are one beast of blood and wood and iron.
A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.
Ten years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out. The only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were. That’s my main concern, and always will be.
You are an honest and honorable man, Lord Eddard. Ofttimes I forget that. I have met so few of them in my life.” He glanced around the cell. “When I see what honesty and honor have won you, I understand why.
There is entirely too much tut-tutting in this realm, if you ask me. All these kings would do a deal better if they put down their swords and listened to their mothers.
A harp can be a dangerous as a sword, in the right hands.
The truth will set us free. But freedom is cold and empty and frightening, and lies can often be warm and beautiful.
I thank you for calling them off, young ser. I promise you, they would have found me indigestible.
Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.
We are only human, and the Gods have fashioned us for love. This is our greatest glory and our greatest tragedy.
I believe in steel swords, gold coins, and man’s wits. (…) And I believe there once were dragons. I’ve seen their skulls, after all.
So do not waste my time. It is the most precious thing I have, time. It is the most precious thing any of us have.
The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.
…the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.””…a ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.
Lem glowered. “Your lion friends ride into some village, take all the food and every coin they find, and call it foraging. the wolves as well, so why not us? no one robbed you, dog. You just been good and foraged.
Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman? (wonders Lady Catelyn Stark)
A shy smile, strong arms, clever fingers, and two sure swords. What more could any woman want?
A man can own a woman, and a man can own a knife, but no man can own both,
If every woman had a direwolf, men would be much sweeter.
A book can be as dangerous as a sword in the right hands, said Haldon.
There are gods and there are true knights too. All the stories can’t be lies.
Most of the stories you hear about dragons are fodder for fools.
Make no choice, and you have chosen. Failure to decide, because you lack the right, is itself a decision, First Councilor. In abstaining, you vote.
You wear your honor like a suit of armor… You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move.
A hedge knight must hold tight to his pride. Without it, he was no more than a sellsword
I have more concern for my nephew’s welfare than for Lannister pride.
It’s not a career for anyone who needs or values security. It’s a career for gamblers. Every time you write a book you roll the dice again.
Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.
She tried so hard to be brave, to be fierce as a wolverine and all, but sometimes she felt like she was just a little girl after all.
No one has ever died of restlessness, but rashness is another matter. We’ve planted seeds, let them grow.
My smile is my servant, he should come at my command.
Why would the stars want to look down on such as me?
A sworn sworn owes his liege our service and obedience, but this is madness.
She could not bear to look at him just now. If she did, she might well slap him again. Or cry. Or kiss him. And never know which was right and which was wrong and which was madness.
Only the innocent know the peace of untroubled sleep. Confess sins, and you will sleep like a newborn babe.
When a dog goes bad, the fault lies with his master.
I value my privacy, and if sometimes my actions seem strange or arbitrary or capricious, I do not want them challenged.
Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid? That’s the only tine a man can be brave.
Strike hard and true, crow, or I’ll come back and haunt you.
Even brave men blind themselves sometimes, when they are afraid to see.
It is said with truth that every building is constructed stone by stone, and the same may be said of knowledge, extracted and compiled by many learned men, each of whom builds upon the works of those who proceeded him.
She might have wept then, had not the sky begun to do it for her.
Every child knows its mother, Dany thought. When the seas go dry and the mountains blow in the wind like leaves.
My mother said my father had a drop of dragon blood.”“Two drops. That, or a cock six feet long.
Catelyn wanted to run to him, to kiss his sweet brow, to wrap him in her arms so tightly that he would never come to harm….
all men carry murder in their hearts, yet even so, the poisoner is beneath contempt.
That’s one way we differ, Jaime and I. He’s taller as well, you may have noticed.
worms have crawled up your nose and eaten your wits.
The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord,” Mirri said. “Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold them back.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do is nothing. Catelyn
In the closeness of the passage, the queen could smell the other woman’s perfume, a musky scent that spoke of moss and earth and wildflowers. Under it, she smelled ambition.
Perhaps you should speak more softly to me, then. Monsters are dangerous beasts, and just now kings seem to be dying like flies.
I was very sorry to hear about your losses. Your brother was a terrible traitor, I know, but if we start killing men at weddings they’ll be more frightened of marriage than they are presently. (Olenna Tyrell to Sansa Stark
I will hurt you for this. I don’t know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you’ll know the debt is paid.
It’s death and destruction I want to bring down upon House Lannister, not scorn. Jon said.
Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what’s on the other side?
Curiosity is my great vice. I fear you have seen through to the heart of me, and now seek to exploit my weakness
I swear to you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one.
All these kings would do a deal better if they would put down their swords and listen to their mothers.
They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a man’s laughter freezes in his throat and chokes him to death,” Ned said evenly. “Perhaps that is why the Starks have so little humor.
They’re both bungholes who think they’re too noble to shit,
Ser Cleos looked like a weasel, fought like a goose, and had the courage of an especially brave ewe.
Hatred does not stir the stone men half so much as hunger.
His eyes were open wounds beneath his heavy brows, a blue as dark as the sea by night.
The little man gave the big one a look. One of his eyes was green, one was black, and both were cool.
Life is warmth and warmth is fire, and fire is God’s and God’s alone.
Any cat may stare into a fire and see red mice play,
Surely the Gods did not bring me safe through fire and sea only to kill me with a flux.
Cats never weep, she told herself, no more than wolves. It’s just a stupid dream.
Silver’s sweet and gold’s our mother, but once you’re dead they’re worth less than that last shit you take as you lie dying.
Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I’ll sleep more easily by night.
Without honor, a knight is no more than a common killer. It is better to die with honor than to live without it.
Would you rather die with honor intact or live with it besmirched?
Our honor means no more than our lives, so long as the realm is safe.
Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next.
Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester and poison the soul.
We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.
Three good men dead, to save a hedge knight’s foot.
I never understood what Jaime saw in you, apart from his own reflection.
These are the winter’s people, he reminded himself. Tears froze upon your cheeks where they come from.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, men said, but the enemy of my friend is my enemy.
I have never forgotten, and I can’t imagine you have, and I’ve thought of it over the years. It was so good, when it was good, I kept thinking. How could it go wrong?
He has a sellsword’s conscience, she realized then. That is to say none at all.
When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child, then he will return, and not before.
Is that gallantry I smell, or just stupidity? The two scents are much alike, as I recall.
Never drink with Dornishmen when the moon is full.
The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife.
My first rule of war, Cat-never give the enemy his wish
My lord father used to say a man should never draw his sword unless he means to use it.
Jaime gave her [Brienne] a hard smile. “See, wench? We know each other too well.
Arya did not dare [take a bath], even though she smelled as bad as Yoren by now, all sour and stinky. Some of the creatures living in her clothes had come all the way from Flea Bottom with her; it didn’t seem right to drown them.
What sort of gods make rats and plagues and dwarfs?
Why do the Gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?
…his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking
She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above.
A small spoon of victory is just the thing to settle the stomach before battle, ” Ser Imry had declared happily.
She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of the horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well.
Sometimes the storm winds blow so strong a man has no choice but to furl his sails.
Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don’t have the strength to fight it.
Winter is coming, warned the Stark words, and truly it had come to them with a vengeance. But it is high summer for House Lannister. So why am I so bloody cold?
It’s not,” Mormont told him. “Gods save us, boy, you’re not blind and you’re not stupid. When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron Throne?
In this world the weak are the victims of the strong.
Jon:’What are you doing up there? Why aren’t you at the feast?’Tyrion: ‘Too hot, too noisy, and I’d drunk too much wine’, the dwarf told him. ‘I learned long ago that it is considered rude to vomit on your brother.
All Knights must bleed. Blood is the seal of our devotion.
Brick and blood built Astapor, and brick and blood her people.
Disease could wipe out an army quicker than any battle.
The looters comes with the carrion crows after every battle.
Then Royce’s parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. The young Lord cried out in pain. Blood welled between the rings. It seemed red as fire where they touched the snow.
A man is never so vulnerable in a battle as when he flees,” Lord Eddard has told Jon once. “A running man is like a wounded animal to a soldier. It gets his bloodlust up.
All men must die. We are but death’s instruments, not death himself.
Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories.
The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid.
A man can own a woman or a man can own a knife, but no man can own both.
My uncle always said that it was the sword in a man’s hand that determined his worth, not the one between his legs.
Power is a trick. It lies where we believe it lies.
The man is as useless as nipples on a breastplate.
Yet the higher a man climbs the further he has to fall.
Politicians were mostly people who’d had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.
No, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE?
Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle.
A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor.
Why has no one come to pry me out of here?- Cersei