A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)

by George R.R. Martin

“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”

Bran had been marking the days on his wall, eager to depart, to see a world he had only dreamed of and begin a life he could scarcely imagine.

promontories

cacophony.

“But I never fall,” he said, falling.

scourge,

If he must be alone, he would make solitude his armor.

Jon could not find it in him to pray to any gods, old or new. If they were real, he thought, they were as cruel and implacable as winter.

why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what’s on the other side?”

insolence.

lecherous

verdant.

“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.”

“He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi,” the Lysene girl said. “Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return.”

“I hated it there.” He scratched Ghost behind the ear, brooding, and Jon let the silence breathe. After a long while Samwell Tarly began to talk, and Jon Snow listened quietly, and learned how it was that a self-confessed coward found himself on the Wall.

his voice was honey poured over thunder.”

cajoled

silence sometimes yielded more than questions.

gaunt,

bestir

insolence

Seven towers, Ned had told her, like white daggers thrust into the belly of the sky, so high you can stand on the parapets and look down on the clouds.

he had listened to them all patiently, as he listened now, laughing at their triumphs and sympathizing with their childish misfortunes.

He was a bee in a stone honeycomb, and someone had torn off his wings.

ululating

wizened

The king eats, Robert had said, and the Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed. Yet he had gotten it wrong. The king dies, Ned Stark thought, and the Hand is buried.

why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?

pestilential

We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

resplendent.

It would not do to lose the light.