A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)

by George R.R. Martin

“Maester Cressen told Stannis that we might be forced to eat our dead, and there was no gain in flinging away good meat.”

“Tell me, my lady, do direwolves vote on who should lead the pack?”

a heartbeat before the steel of his gorget parted like cheesecloth beneath the shadow of a blade that was not there.

his jaw clenched hard as iron,

The strain of keeping up with younger men was taking its toll.

“If I could fly, I’d be back at Castle Black eating a pork pie,”

“All I smell is the shit of two hundred horses. And this stew. Which has a similar aroma, now that I come to sniff it.”

Petyr Pimple.

“A knight is what you want. A warg is what you are.

You are the winged wolf, but you will never fly.”

“Maester Luwin says there’s nothing in dreams that a man need fear.” “There is,” said Jojen. “What?” “The past. The future. The truth.”

His throat was opened from ear to ear by a blade that passed through steel and bone as if they were soft cheese.”

“Have you ever considered that too many answers are the same as no answer at all?

A ticklish question.

“Sweet Petyr, surely you do not mean to suggest that these puissant lords and noble knights could be bought like so many chickens in the market.”

“You’d find it easier to buy a lord than a chicken,

“He was angry with the girl.” “He was angry with that cook’s boy who spilled the soup last night as well, but he didn’t strip him naked.”

you piece of sheep dung.”

Aeron Damphair’s voice cut through the insults like a sword through cheese.

The crows will eat the jelly of your eyes.”

The living should smile, for the dead cannot.”

The blow had splintered his jaw, shattered his front teeth, and left him four lips where other men had but two.

Yoinks

On the Iron Islands, every captain was a king aboard his own ship.

“The scuff of leather on stone sings loud as warhorns to a man with open ears. Clever girls go barefoot.”

I swear it by the old gods and the new.”

“They have hanged some Lannisters,” Hal Mollen observed. “A pretty sight,”

The tales we’ve heard have been queer.”

Once, she would have named Tyrion the least dangerous of the Lannisters. Now she was not so certain.

The man is half Lannister, half Frey, and all liar.

“A ward can easily become a hostage, if need be.”

Her father’s hands clutched at hers, fluttering like two frightened white birds.

Bones, Catelyn thought. This is not Ned, this is not the man I loved, the father of my children.

“I see a deep sadness written upon your face, my light of love.”

“Could it be the sadness of a lost dream?”

The Pureborn were notorious for offering poisoned wine to those they thought dangerous, but they had not given Dany so much as a cup of water.

“The blood of the dragon does not weep,”

The Qartheen wept often and easily; it was considered a mark of the civilized man.

striped zorses,

“You speak sweetly, Xaro, but under your words I hear another no.”

to sip the wine of wisdom from a dead man’s skull.”

“I mean to sail to Westeros, and drink the wine of vengeance from the skull of the Usurper.”

“With what coin, sweet star of my heaven?”

it is truly said that blue lips speak only lies.

Warlocks are bitter creatures who eat dust and drink of shadows.

I have given you this palanquin of ebony and gold, and a matched set of bullocks to bear it, one white as ivory and one black as jet, with horns inlaid with jewels.”

“You mew like a suckling babe,”

If I were Mace Tyrell, I would sooner have Joffrey’s head on a pike than his cock in my daughter.

I like this not one speck,

“Joffrey! All hail, all hail!” as the young king rode by, but for every man who picked up the shout, a hundred kept their silence.

“Whore!” she shrieked. “Kingslayer’s whore! Brotherfucker!”

Period