More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“In the Seven Kingdoms it is considered a grave breach of hospitality to poison your guest at supper.”
“The queen has offered a lordship to the man who brings her your head, no matter how humble his birth.” It was no more than Tyrion had expected. “If you mean to take her up on it, make her spread her legs for you as well. The best part of me for the best part of her, that’s a fair trade.”
“It is always cold on the Wall.” “You think so?” “I know so, my lady.” “Then you know nothing, Jon Snow,” she whispered.
The dwarf rolled over, pressing half a nose deep into the silken pillows. Sleep opened beneath him like a well, and he threw himself into it with a will and let the darkness eat him up.
So much for vows. Words are wind, and the wind from Manderly’s mouth means no more than the wind escaping out his bottom.”
The fisherman drowned, but his daughter got Stark to the Sisters before the boat went down. They say he left her with a bag of silver and a bastard in her belly. Jon Snow, she named him, after Arryn.
Once a man has seen a dragon in flight, let him stay at home and tend his garden in content, someone had written once, for this wide world has no greater wonder.
“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.”
Careful of the rats, my lord.” Dolorous Edd led Jon down the steps, a lantern in one hand. “They make an awful squeal if you step on them. My mother used to make a similar sound when I was a boy. She must have had some rat in her, now that I think of it. Brown hair, beady little eyes, liked cheese. Might be she had a tail too, I never looked to see.”
Kings and corpses always draw attendants, the old saying went.
“Young girls should be an ornament to the eye, not an ache in the ear.”
“Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical,” he told Haldon, “the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It’s the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble.”
Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the Other, who would drag us all into his eternal night.
Perhaps he did not think himself worthy of the King’s Tower, or perhaps he did not care. That was his mistake, the false humility of youth that is itself a sort of pride. It was never wise for a ruler to eschew the trappings of power, for power itself flows in no small measure from such trappings.
“An invitation will accomplish the same thing. Power tastes best when sweetened by courtesy.
A peaceful land, a quiet people, that has always been my rule.” “A fine rule, m’lord.”
When you have known the kiss of a flaying knife, a laugh loses all its power to hurt you.
Drowning is bad enough, he reflected sourly, but drowning sad and sober, that’s too cruel.
“Prophecy is like a half-trained mule,” he complained to Jorah Mormont. “It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head.
Tyrion had his doubts, but he kept them to himself. One day he might want to bite someone in the leg, and for that you needed teeth.
The human prune in the place of honor was evidently the Yunkish supreme commander, who looked about as formidable as a loose stool.
No doubt there had been sorties and skirmishes at the start of the siege, and arrows flying back and forth; half a year into it, everyone was too tired for such nonsense. Boredom and routine had taken over, the enemies of discipline.
Past a certain point, all the dates grow hazy and confused, and the clarity of history becomes the fog of legend.”
He had foes to face. Foes of the worst sort: brothers.
The rest of that long day raced past as swiftly as a snail.
A cat will kill a mouse, a pig will wallow in shit, and a sellsword will run off when he’s needed most. Can’t be blamed. Just the nature of the beast.”
“The time to speak of the cold,” said Grand Maester Pycelle, “is not when we are standing out in it.”
