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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.
“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.
Jon looked down on the scene with a frown. “Joffrey is truly a little shit,” he told Arya.
I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind
Hodor’s real name was Walder.
He forced himself to climb faster. The gargoyles watched him ascend. Their eyes glowed red as hot coals in a brazier. Perhaps once they had been lions, but now they were twisted and grotesque. Bran could hear them whispering to each other in soft stone voices terrible to hear. He must not listen, he told himself, he must not hear, so long as he did not hear them he was safe. But when the gargoyles pulled themselves loose from the stone and padded down the side of the tower to where Bran clung, he knew he was not safe after all. “I didn’t hear,” he wept as they came closer and closer, “I
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Stone was a bastard’s name in the Vale, as Snow was in the north, and Flowers in Highgarden; in each of the Seven Kingdoms, custom had fashioned a surname for children born with no names of their own.
If you bed enough women, some will give you presents,
“Life is not a song, sweetling. You may learn that one day to your sorrow.”
he was awfully old, almost twenty-two;
once you have taken the black, there is no turning back.
“Hodor,” said Hodor.
“Hodor?” he said sadly. “Hodor,” Bran agreed, wondering what it meant.
A fool more foolish than most had once jested that even Lord Tywin’s shit was flecked with gold.
why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?
They were lowborn, even as I was, but they do not like to recall that. When they look at our banner, all they see is a tall black ship flying on the wind. They close their eyes to the onion.
“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
Arya watched and listened and polished her hates the way Gendry had once polished his horned helm.
“Sweet smells are sometimes used to cover foul ones.”
The years pass in their hundreds and their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so they seem … but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.
“The day is won,” Dagmer called down. “And yet you do not smile, boy. The living should smile, for the dead cannot.” He smiled himself to show how it was done. It made for a hideous sight.
“I have never liked you, Cersei, but you were my own sister, so I never did you harm. You’ve ended that. 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.”
I am become a sour woman, Catelyn thought. 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.
Same
Forbid her anything and it became her heart’s desire.
“I see you had no taste for the wine I sent you.” “Such sudden generosity seemed somewhat suspect.” “I can have your head off anytime I want. Why would I need to poison you?” “Death by poison can seem natural. Harder to claim that my head simply fell off.”
“If there are gods, why is the world so full of pain and injustice?” “Because of men like you.” “There are no men like me. There’s only me.”
The warlocks whispered of three treasons … once for blood and once for gold and once for love.
three, they had called her, daughter of death, slayer of lies, bride of fire. So many threes. Three fires, three mounts to ride, three treasons. “The dragon has three heads,”
Perhaps the dead could speak to them in some secret tongue the living could not hear.
The crows came in the blue dusk, with the evening stars. “The Dothraki believe the stars are spirits of the valiant dead,”
They rode through the ashes and took the usurper Stannis in the rear.
Will he howl for me when I’m dead, as Bran’s wolf howled when he fell? Jon wondered. Will Shaggydog howl, far off in Winterfell, and Grey Wind and Nymeria, wherever they might be?
Davos had always been a sailor; he was meant to die at sea. The gods beneath the waters have been waiting for me, he told himself.
night falls for all of us in the end, and too soon for some.
All these kings would do a deal better if they would put down their swords and listen to their mothers.”
Not everyone who spoke you friendly was really your friend.
Do you dream of sunlight and laughter and a maiden’s kisses? I pray you do. Her own dreams were dark and laced with terrors.
“Remember. To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”
“I’m crying because we never found the Horn of Winter. We opened half a hundred graves and let all those shades loose in the world, and never found the Horn of Joramun to bring this cold thing down!”
I think everyone is just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending is how you get brave, I don’t know.
Might be your Smith can mend a broken sword, but can he heal a broken man?”
“A woman in a bearskin, with a child in one arm suckling at her breast. In the other hand she holds a battleaxe. She’s no proper lady, that one, but I always loved her.”
Sam was thankful for that. Night was coming on, and it would be good to sleep beneath a roof for once. He was so tired. It seemed as though he had been walking half his life. His boots were falling to pieces, and all the blisters on his feet had burst and turned to callus, but now he had new blisters under the callus, and his toes were getting frostbitten.
She could feel the hole inside her every morning when she woke. It wasn’t hunger, though sometimes there was that too. It was a hollow place, an emptiness where her heart had been, where her brothers had lived, and her parents. Her head hurt too. Not as bad as it had at first, but still pretty bad. Arya was used to that, though, and at least the lump was going down. But the hole inside her stayed the same. The hole will never feel any better, she told herself when she went to sleep. Some mornings Arya did not want to wake at all.
The farm folk gave her curious glances, but no one spoke to her. It is for me to talk to them, Brienne told herself, but she had always found it hard to speak with strangers. Even as a girl she had been shy. Long years of scorn had only made her shyer.
