A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)

by George R.R. Martin

“My sister has mistaken me for a mushroom. She keeps me in the dark and feeds me shit.

“Some battles are won with swords and spears, others with quills and ravens.

once the cow’s been milked there’s no squirting the cream back up her udder. After

I’ve never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they’re only men with the useful bits cut off.

One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.” She

You were made to be kissed, often and well.”

Not everyone who spoke you friendly was really your friend.

They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They’ve never seen a battle, they’ve never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her father’s head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.

coin is as dangerous as a sword in the wrong hands.”

“The greatest fools are ofttimes more clever than the men who laugh at them,” he

time slept when swords woke.

“I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with sea-weed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror.

The gods give each of us our little gifts and talents, and it is meant for us to use them, my aunt always says. Any act can be a prayer, if done as well as we are able. Isn’t

“Only lies offend me, never honest counsel.”

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.

“If ice can burn,” said Jojen in his solemn voice, “then love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one.”

“Some people hurt others just because they can,”

Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time.”

When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone.

She saw my purpose in her flames.

And what did she mean when she said that I had served her god and would serve him again?

We look up at the same stars, and see such different things.

“If you kill a man, and never mean t’, he’s just as dead,”

“Give me all,” she said, “and you may have a dragon.”

A dragon is no slave.”

I am a Stark, yes, I can be brave.

Yes, and I want to be tall as Jaime and as strong as Ser Gregor the Mountain too, for all the bloody good it does.

😔

For hands of gold are always cold, but a woman’s hands are warm …”

“There’s a pot shop I know in Flea Bottom makes a savory bowl of brown. All kinds of meat in it, I hear.”

😳🤮

Sometimes I think everyone is just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are.

The singers make much of kings who die valiantly in battle, but your life is worth more than a song.

There are fights no sword can win,

Soon comes the cold, and the night that never ends.”

“And well you might, since you were said to have one, a stiff curly tail like a swine’s. Your head was monstrous huge, we heard, half again the size of your body, and you had been born with thick black hair and a beard besides, an evil eye, and lion’s claws. Your teeth were so long you could not close your mouth, and between your legs were a girl’s privates as well as a boy’s.”

You would wail for hours, and nothing would quiet you but a woman’s teat.” “Still true, as it happens.”

😂

“Sweet? No, my friend. Not sweet.” “Then do not court it so.

And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low? Only a cat of a different coat, that’s all the truth I know. In a coat of gold or a coat of red, a lion still has claws, And mine are long and sharp, my lord, as long and sharp as yours. And so he spoke, and so he spoke, that lord of Castamere, But now the rains weep o’er his hall, with no one there to hear. Yes now the rains weep o’er his hall, and not a soul to hear.

After that, he rolled her in his horse blanket every night when he went to sleep, and tied ropes around her top and bottom so she was bound up as tight as a babe in swaddling clothes.

😂

“But I’ll beat you if you make me. Stop trying to think up ways to kill me. None of it will do you a bit of good.”

In the midst of slaughter, the Lord of the Crossing sat on his carved oaken throne, watching greedily.

Fear cuts deeper than swords.

any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king at

My Father once told me, Often times when people say “I’m this” or “I’m that” they’re saying what they want to be, not what they truly are.

Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.”

The sea. He loved that smell.

There are old sellswords and bold sellswords, but no old bold sellswords.” She

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. Sometimes the best way to baffle them is to make moves that have no purpose, or even seem to work against you.

“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.”

Half-truths are worth more than outright lies. And

🤔

Everyone wants something, Alayne. And when you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him.”

It all goes back and back, Tyrion thought, to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads.