The cup has passed, and you must drink from it, like it or not.
Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle.
You ought to take the hedgehog as your sigil.
My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind … and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.
Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said.
“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?” he heard his own voice saying, small and far away. And his father’s voice replied to him. “That is the only time a man can be brave.”
“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 had found over the years that silence sometimes yielded more than questions. And so it was this time.
Singers loved nothing half so well as the sound of their own voices.
A Lannister always paid his debts.
The Red Keep was full of cats: lazy old cats dozing in the sun, cold-eyed mousers twitching their tails, quick little kittens with claws like needles, ladies’ cats all combed and trusting, ragged shadows prowling the midden heaps.
Older than sin and twice as mean.
Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I’ve found. Whores seldom sink, and when they are boarded by pirates, why, the pirates pay good coin like everyone else.
His brother never untied a knot when he could slash it in two with his sword.
Some illiterates held writing in disdain; others seemed to have a superstitious reverence for the written word, as if it were some sort of magic.
“I asked why each link was a different metal. A silver chain would look much finer with his grey robes, I said. Maester Luwin laughed. A maester forges his chain with study, he told me. The different metals are each a different kind of learning, gold for the study of money and accounts, silver for healing, iron for warcraft. And he said there were other meanings as well. The collar is supposed to remind a maester of the realm he serves, isn’t that so? Lords are gold and knights steel, but two links can’t make a chain. You also need silver and iron and lead, tin and copper and bronze and all the rest, and those are farmers and smiths and merchants and the like. A chain needs all sorts of metals, and a land needs all sorts of people.” You can’t hammer tin into iron, no matter how hard you beat it, but that doesn’t mean tin is useless.
Life is not a song, sweetling. You may learn that one day to your sorrow.
Sleep is the great healer.
When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.
“Hear my words, and bear witness to my vow,” they recited, their voices filling the twilit grove. “Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.”
Fear cuts deeper than swords. The man who fears losing has already lost.
A man who won’t listen can’t hear.
Laughter is poison to fear.
Boys might play with swords, but it took a lord to make a marriage pact, knowing what it meant.
He had dreamed of doing great deeds, as boys always did.
Honor the steel with deeds, not words.
What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, our great tragedy.
The man who trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword.
If I look back I am lost
You feed your dog bones under the table, you do not seat him beside you on the high bench.