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A Song of Ice and Fire

series of epic fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin

A Song of Ice and Fire (1996 –) is a series of epic fantasy novels written by American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. Martin began the series in 1991 in response to the limitation of television production and published the first volume, Game of Thrones, in 1996. Martin gradually extended the originally planned trilogy into four, six and eventually seven volumes, the last two of which he will not finish.

I'm honest. It’s the world that’s awful.

Quotations

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In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women...
 
Winter is coming.
 
Night gathers, and now my watch begins.
  • A knight who remembered his vows.
    • Steely Pate in The Hedge Knight (1998). Describing Duncan the Tall, to explain why the commoners are on his side.
  • In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women...
    • The Hedge Knight (1998). Start of the knighting ceremony
  • 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.
    • Vow of the Night's Watch
  • Winter is Coming.
    • Words of House Stark
  • Fire and Blood
    • Words of House Targaryen
  • Hear Me Roar
    • Words of House Lannister
  • Ours is the Fury
    • Words of House Baratheon
  • Family, Duty, Honor
    • Words of House Tully
  • We Do Not Sow
    • Words of House Greyjoy
  • As High As Honor
    • Words of House Arryn
  • Growing Strong
    • Words of House Tyrell
  • Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken.
    • Words of House Martell
  • Our Blades Are Sharp
    • Words of House Bolton
  • Valar morghulis.
    • "All men must die," A maxim in High Valyrian
  • Valar dohaeris.
    • "All men must serve," A maxim in High Valyrian.
  • The cold winds are rising.
    • Common saying
  • The night is dark and full of terrors.
    • Often said by worshippers of The Lord of Light
  • 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.
    • A line in the song "The Rains of Castamere." (A song written about the destruction of House Tarbeck and House Reyne brought about by Lord Tywin Lannister.)
  • A Lannister always pays his debts.
    • A saying about the Lannisters
 
And now his watch has ended
  • What is dead may never die, but rises again harder and stronger.
    • Ironborn creed
  • And now his watch has ended.
    • Epitaph of the Night's Watch
  • I am so sorry.
    • Said by The Sorrowful Men right before an assassination
  • Words are wind.
    • Common saying
  • May the Father judge him justly.
    • Common Epitaph

A Game of Thrones (1996)

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  • “We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. “The wildlings are dead.”
    • Prologue (opening words)
  • The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer.
    • Bran (I)
  • "Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?"
    "That is the only time a man can be brave."
    • Bran (I)—Bran & Ned
  • 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.
    • Bran (I)—Lord Eddard Stark
  • A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.
    • Bran (I)—Lord Eddard Stark
  • The words gave her a chill, as they always did. The Stark words. Every noble house had its words. Family mottoes, touchstones, prayers of sorts, they boasted of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and courage. All but the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark words.
    • Catelyn (I)-Catelyn Stark
  • Anger flashed in her brother’s lilac eyes. “Do you take me for a fool?”
    The magister bowed slightly. “I take you for a king. Kings lack the caution of common men.”
    • Daenerys (I)—Viserys & Illyrio
  • Generations of capering fools in motley have won me the right to dress badly and say any damn thing that comes into my head.
    • Jon (I)—Tyrion Lannister
  • 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.
    • Jon (I)—Tyrion Lannister
  • Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night.
    • Bran (II)—Jaime Lannister
  • Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.
    • Tyrion (I)—Tyrion Lannister
  • I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown? The gods mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike.
    • Eddard (II)—King Robert Baratheon
  • My mind is my weapon. 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.
    • Tyrion (II)—Tyrion Lannister
  • Never draw your sword unless you mean to use it.
    • Catelyn (III)-Ser Rodrick Cassell
  • He was always clever, even as a boy, but it is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.
    • Catelyn (IV)—Catelyn Stark
  • 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.
    • Jon (III)
  • "They hate me because I'm better than they are"
    "No. They hate you because you act like you're better than they are."
    • Jon (III)-Jon Snow and Donal Noye
  • Let them see that their words can cut you, and you'll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can't hurt you with it anymore.
    • Jon (III)—Tyrion Lannister
  • "Know the men who follow you, and let them know you. Don't ask your men to die for a stranger."
    • Arya (II)-Lord Eddard Stark
  • “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.”
    • Daenerys (III)—Ser Jorah Mormont
  • I swear to you, I was never so alive as when I was winning this throne, or so dead as now that I've won it.
    • Eddard (VII)—King Robert Baratheon
  • Wizards die the same as other men, once you cut their heads off.
    • Arya (III)—Desmond
  • A true man does what he will, not what he must.
    • Eddard (XII)—Cersei Lannister
  • When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.
    • Eddard (XII)—Cersei Lannister
  • "Ah, but when the queen proclaims one king and the Hand another, whose peace do they protect?" Lord Petyr flicked at the dagger with his finger, setting it spinning in place. When at last it slowed to a stop, the blade pointed at Littlefinger. "Why, there's your answer. They follow the man who pays them."
    • Eddard (XIII)-Lord Petyr Baelish, discussing the loyalty of the Gold Cloaks
 
They follow the man who pays them.
  • You wear your honor like a suit of armor, Stark. You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move.
    • Eddard (XIII)—Lord Petyr Baelish
  • Laughter is poison to fear.
    • Catelyn (VIII)—Catelyn Stark
  • Some commands are more easily given than obeyed.
    • Jon (VII)
  • There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man.
    • Eddard (XIV)—Lord Varys
  • For fifteen years I protected him from his enemies, but I could not protect him from his friends.
    • Eddard (XV)–Lord Varys
  • "What strange fit of madness led you to tell the queen that you had learned the secret of Joffrey's birth?"
    "The madness of mercy."
    • Eddard (XV)–Varys & Ned
  • “You are an honest and honorable man, Lord Eddard. Ofttimes I forget that. I have met so few of them in my life.” He glanced around the cell. “When I see what honesty and honor have won you, I understand why.”
    • Eddard (XV)—Lord Varys
  • Tell me, Lord Eddard ... why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?
    • Eddard (XV)—Lord Varys
  • In life, the monsters win.
    • Sansa (VI)
  • A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.
    • Jon (?) - Maester Aemon
  • Wherever you have a camp, you are certain to have camp followers.
    • Tyrion (VIII)
  • A man who fights for coin is loyal only to his purse.
    • Tyrion (IX)—Ser Kevan Lannister
  • It is no good hammering your sword into a plowshare if you must forge it again on the morrow.
    • Catelyn (XI)—Ser Brynden Tully
  • Is it so far from madness to wisdom?
    • Danaerys (X)–Danaerys

A Clash of Kings (1999)

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  • Many called her beautiful. She was not beautiful. She was red, and terrible, and red.
    • Prologue
  • The world preferred to forget that men who knew how to heal also knew how to kill.
    • Prologue
  • "The Watch needs good men" he told them as they set out, "but you lot will have to do."
    • Arya (I)–Yoren
  • Prince Tommen was not so obedient. “I’m supposed to ride against the straw man.”
    “Not today.”
    “But I want to ride!”
    “I don’t care what you want.”
    “Mother said I could ride.”
    “She said,” Princess Myrcella agreed.
    “Mother said,” mocked the king. “Don’t be childish.”
    “We’re children,” Myrcella declared haughtily. “We’re supposed to be childish.”
    The Hound laughed. “She has you there.”
    • Sansa (I)
  • Crowns do queer things to the heads beneath them.
    • Tyrion (I)—Tyrion Lannister
  • Schemes are like fruit, they require a certain ripening
    • Tyrion (I)—Tyrion Lannister
  • Doubtless fresh rats were to be preferred to old stale rotten rats ... When times grew lean, even bakers found sellswords cheaper than bread, he reflected.
    • Tyrion (I)
  • Only cowards kill the vanquished
    • Tyrion (I)—Shae
  • I'm terrified of my enemies, so I kill them all.
    • Tyrion (I)—Tyrion Lannister
  • “I’ll have the boy.” ...
    “You’ll have no one,” Yoren said stubbornly. “There’s laws on such things.”
    The gold cloak drew a shortsword. “Here’s your law.”
    Yoren looked at the blade. “That’s no law, just a sword. Happens I got one too.”
    • Arya (II)
  • There's no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it.
    • Jon (I)
  • Some men want whores on the eve of battle, and some want gods. Jon wondered who felt better afterward.
    • Jon (I)
  • Catelyn was finding that kings do not listen half so attentively as sons.
    • Catelyn (I)
  • “He’ll want what kings always want,” she said. “Homage.”
    • Catelyn (I)—Catelyn Stark
  • "My first rule of war, Cat—never give the enemy his wish."
    • Catelyn (I)–Brynden Tully
  • Can a whore truly love anyone, I wonder?
    • Tyrion (II)–Tyrion
  • If it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, why do we pretend kings have the power?
    • Tyrion (II)—Lord Varys
  • "Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less."
    "So power is a mummer's trick?"
    "A shadow on the wall," Varys murmured, "yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow."
    • Tyrion (II)—Lord Varys and Tyrion
  • “Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe . . . an infant girl, say, still at her mother’s breast . . . would you do it? Without question?”
    “Without question? No.” The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together. “I'd ask how much.”
    • Tyrion (II)—Tyrion and Bronn
  • The morning air was dark with the smoke of burning gods.
    • Davos (I)
  • When a pirate grows rich enough, they make him a prince.
    • Davos (I)
  • This world is twisted beyond hope, when lowborn smugglers must vouch for the honor of kings
    • Davos (I)
  • So many kings, my tongue grows weary of the word.
    • Davos (I)—Salladhor Saan
  • What good is this, I ask you? He who hurries through life hurries to his grave.
    • Davos (I)—Salladhor Saan
  • “I do not know this Lord of Light,” Davos admitted, “but I knew the gods we burned this morning. The Smith has kept my ships safe, while the Mother has given me seven strong sons.”
    “Your wife has given you seven strong sons. Do you pray to her? It was wood we burned this morning.”
    • Davos (I)—Davos and Stannis
  • I stopped believing in gods the day I saw the Windproud break up across the bay. Any gods so monstrous as to drown my mother and father would never have my worship, I vowed. In King’s Landing, the High Septon would prattle at me of how all justice and goodness flowed from the Seven, but all I ever saw of either was made by men.
    • Davos (I)—King Stannis Baratheon
  • A frightened man is a beaten man
    • Davos (I)—King Stannis Baratheon
  • When you have seen your kings shit over the rail and turn green in a storm, it was hard to bend the knee and pretend they were gods.
    • Theon (I)
  • A crown was worth a little mud and horseshit on his breeches, he supposed.
    • Theon (I)
  • The Iron Islands lived in the past; the present was too hard and bitter to be borne.
    • Theon (I)
  • A man agrees with god as a raindrop with the storm.
    • Theon (I)—Aeron Greyjoy
  • Boys believe nothing can hurt them, his doubt whispered. Grown men know better.
    • Theon (I)—Theon Greyjoy
  • Bad enough when the dead come walking. Now the Old Bear wants them talking as well! ... The dead are likely dull fellows, full of tedious complaints—the ground’s too cold, my gravestone should be larger, why does he get more worms than I do...
    • Jon (II)—Dolorous Edd
  • If it's softer than ground and has a roof over it, I call it a bed.
    • Jon (II)–Dolorous Edd
  • She got dirt in her mouth but she didn't care, the taste was fine, the taste was mud and water and worms and life.
    • Arya (IV)
  • 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.
    • Tyrion (III)—Tyrion
  • The smallfolk are always eager to believe the worst of their lords.
    • Tyrion (III)—Tyrion
  • "The smiths are in your audience chamber, waiting your pleasure", he said as they crossed the ward.
    "Waiting my pleasure. I like the ring of that, Bronn. You almost sound like a proper courtier. Next you'll be kneeling."
    "Fuck you, dwarf."
    "That's Shae's task."
    • Tyrion (III)–Bronn and Tyrion
  • Let us not get into the habit of names. Names are dangerous.
    • Tyrion (III)–Tyrion
  • If I could pray with my cock I'd be a lot more religious.
    • Tyrion (III)–Tyrion
  • It is one thing to deceive a king, and quite another to hide from the cricket in the rushes and the little bird in the chimney.
    • Tyrion (III)–Varys
  • If there is food I eat it, in case there is none on the morrow.
    • Tyrion (IV)–Tyrion
  • A man like Petyr Baelish, who had a gift for rubbing two golden dragons together to make a third, was invaluable to his Hand.
    • Tyrion (IV)
  • The longer he lived, the more Tyrion realized that nothing was simple and little was true.
    • Tyrion (IV)
  • Is a secret still a secret if everyone knows it?
    • Tyrion (IV)–Tyrion
  • The talk at the walls had all been of troubles in the city of late. People were crowding in, running from the war, and many had no way to live save robbing and killing each other.
    • Sansa (II)
  • There was something wild about a godswood; even here, in the heart of the castle in the heart of the city, you could feel the old gods watching with a thousand eyes.
    • Sansa (II)
  • "Why do you let people call you a dog? You won't let anyone call you a knight."
    "I like dogs better than knights ... A hound will die for you, but never lie to you."
    • Sansa (II)—Sansa and Sandor Clegane
  • Paint stripes on a toad, he does not become a tiger.
    • Sansa (II)—Sandor Clegane
  • If it could burn the Lannisters had burned it; if it could die, they'd killed it.
    • Arya (V)
  • Part of her wanted to be a swan. The other part wanted to eat one. She had broken her fast on some acorn paste and a handful of bugs. Bugs weren't so bad when you got used to them. Worms were worse, but not so bad as the pain in your belly from days without food.
    • Arya (V)
  • Knights and lordlings, they take each other captive and pay ransoms, but they don't care if the likes of you yield or not.
    • Arya (V)–Gendry
  • That was the way of war. The smallfolk were slaughtered, while the highborn were held for ransom.
    • Tyrion (V)
  • He watched them as from a distance, as if he still sat in the window of his bedchamber looking down on the yard below, seeing everything yet a part of nothing.
    • Bran (III)
  • Dawn came cruel, a dagger of light.
    • Catelyn (II)
  • One day she would allow herself to be less than strong. But it could not be today.
    • Catelyn (II)
  • When there are no battles to fight, men start to think of hearth and harvest.
    • Catelyn (II)–Robb Stark
  • Pity filled Catelyn's heart. Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman?
    • Catelyn (II)
  • King is only a word, but fealty, loyalty, service ... those I must have.
    • Catelyn (II)–Renly Baratheon
  • Have you noticed that the rain stopped the instant I had a roof above me? It will start again now that I'm back out. Gods and dogs alike delight to piss on me.
    • Jon (III)–Dolorous Edd
  • That's my cursed luck. I kill the poor.
    • Theon (II)–Theon
  • "... [W]hen you've known me longer, you'll learn that I mean everything I say."
    "Even the lies?"
    "Especially the lies."
    • Tyrion (VI)—Tyrion and Littlefinger
  • She thought she had known what it meant to be afraid, but she learned better in the storehouse beside the Gods Eye.
    • Arya (VI)
  • Arya watched them die and said nothing. What good did it do you to be brave? ... There were no brave people on that march, only scared and hungry ones.
    • Arya (VI)
  • Every night Arya would say their names. "Ser Gregor," she'd whisper to her stone pillow. "Dunsen, Polliver, Chiswyck, Raff the Sweetling, The Tickler and The Hound. Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei." Back in Winterfell, Arya had prayed with her mother in the setp and with her father in the godswood, but there were no gods on the road to Harrenhal, and the names were the only prayer she cared to remember.
    • Arya (VI)
  • The middle wall, forty feet high, was grey granite alive with scenes of war: the clash of sword and shield and spear, arrows in flight, heroes at battle and babes being butchered, pyres of the dead. The innermost wall was fifty feet of black marble, with carvings that made Dany blush until she told herself that she was being a fool. She was no maid; if she could look on the grey wall’s scenes of slaughter, why should she avert her eyes from the sight of men and women giving pleasure to one another?
    • Daenerys (II)
  • I was a boy, and what boy does not wish to find secret powers hidden in himself?
    • Bran (IV)–Maester Luwin
  • “Sleep is good,” he said. “And books are better.”
    • Tyrion (VII)—Tyrion
  • It is real, all of it, he thought, the wars, the intrigues, the great bloody game, and me in the center of it ... me, the dwarf, the monster, the one they scorned and laughed at, but now I hold it all, the city, the girl. This was what I was made for, and gods forgive me, but I love it.
    • Tyrion (VII)—Tyrion
  • As for those she served with, she did not even want to even know their names. That only made it hurt worse when they died.
    • Arya (VII)
  • Gods do not forget ...
    • Catelyn (III)
  • “Kings have no friends,” Stannis said bluntly, “only subjects and enemies.”
    • Catelyn (III)
A wooden throne resting on four carved lions. A compartment under the seat holds a large rock. On the right a sword leans up against the chair, on the left a great slab. 
Kings have no friends, only subjects and enemies.
  • If you step in a nest of snakes, does it matter which one bites you first?
    • Catelyn (III)—Stannis
  • "Look across the fields, brother? Do you see all those banners?"
    "Do you think a few bolts of cloth will make you king?"
    • Catelyn (III)—Renly and Stannis
  • "I am not without mercy", thundered he who was notoriously without mercy.
    • Catelyn (III)–Stannis
  • "What sort of knight beats helpless maids?"
    "The one who serves his king ..."
    • Sansa (III)–Tyrion and Ser Boros Blount
  • Sorcery is the sauce fools spoon over failure to hide the flavor of their own incompetence.
    • Sansa (III)—Tyrion
  • “Maester Luwin says there’s nothing in dreams that a man need fear.”
    “There is,” said Jojen.
    “What?”
    “The past. The future. The truth.”
    • Bran (V)
  • ... for a moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and heaving, eternal and unknowable.
    • Jon (IV)
  • "You'd best get a bird ready. Mormont will want to send back word."
    "I wish I could send them all. They hate being caged."
    "You would too, if you could fly."
    • Jon (IV)–Jon and Samwell
  • "You think I'm wrong to keep the rangers close?"
    "It's not for me to say, my lord."
    "It is if you're asked."
    • Jon (IV)–Lord Mormont and Jon
  • Why would the gods send a warning if we can't heed it and change what's to come?
    • Bran (V)–Meera Reed
  • Have you ever considered that too many answers are the same as no answer at all? ... When a king dies, fancies sprout like mushrooms in the dark.
    • Tyrion (VIII)–Tyrion
  • The living should smile, for the dead cannot.
    • Theon (III)–Dagmer Cleftjaw
  • Some men are born to be killed.
    • Theon (III)–Dagmer
  • Tomorrow's trials concerned her more than yesterday's triumphs.
    • Catelyn (V)
  • The gods don't care about men, no more than kings care about peasants.
    • Catelyn (V)—Brienne of Tarth
  • One skull looks much like another ...
    • Catelyn (V)
  • I have become the most splendid beggar in the world, but a beggar all the same.
    • Danaerys (III)–Danaerys
  • He distrusts everyone, she reflected, and perhaps for good reason.
    • Daenerys (III)—Daenerys
  • Well, let her enjoy her plots. She was much sweeter when she thought she was outwitting him.
    • Tyrion (IX)
  • Bronn had a score of sellswords scattered throughout the crowd with orders to stop any trouble before it started. Perhaps Cersei had similarly disposed her Kettleblacks. Somehow Tyrion did not think it would help much. If the fire was too hot, you could hardly keep the pudding from scorching by tossing a handful of raisins in the pot.
    • Tyrion (IX)
  • He thought he could smell smoke, though perhaps it was just the scent of his nerves fraying.
    • Tyrion (IX)
  • The list of the slain was topped by the High Septon, ripped apart as he squealed to his gods for mercy. Starving men take a hard view of priests too fat to walk, Tyrion reflected.
    • Tyrion (IX)
  • My most trusted advisors are a eunuch and a sellsword, and my lady's a whore. What does that say about me?
    • Tyrion (IX)–Tyrion
  • When I was smuggling, I learned that some men believe everything, and some nothing.
    • Davos (II)–Davos
  • Whether they believe the story or not, they delight to tell it.
    • Davos (II)–Davos
  • "One day I may make you a lord, smuggler. If only to irk Celtigar and Florent. You will not thank me, though. It will mean you must suffer through these councils, and feign interest in the braying of mules."
    "Why do you have them, if they serve no purpose?"
    "The mules love the sound of their own braying, why else?"
    • Davos (II)–Stannis and Davos
  • "If she saw two futures, well ... both cannot be true."
    King Stannis pointed a finger. "There you err, Onion Knight. Some lights cast more than one shadow."
    • Davos (II)–Davos and Stannis
  • There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows.
    • Davos (II)–Melisandre
  • Send two hundred wolves against ten thousand sheep, ser, and see what happens.
    • Jon (V)–Thoren Smallwood
  • The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome.
    • Jon (V)
  • Why else do we don these black cloaks, but to die in defense of the realm?
    • Jon (V)–Qhorin Halfhand
  • "My nephew is tenderhearted."
    "Are you certain he's a Lannister?"
    "I'm certain of nothing but winter and battle."
    • Tyrion (X)–Tyrion and Bronn
  • Every man who's tasted my cooking has told me what a good whore I am.
    • Tyrion (X)–Shae
  • I believe in steel swords, gold coins and men's wits.
    • Tyrion (X)–Tyrion
  • How can I do my duty if I do not know where it lies?
    • Catelyn (VI)–Catelyn
  • Children are a battle of a different sort ... A battle without banners or warhorns, but no less fierce ... As hard as birth can be, what comes after is even harder.
    • Catelyn (VI)–Catelyn
  • Darkness was a chancy ally at best.
    • Catelyn (VI)
  • For men the answer was always the same, and never farther away than the nearest sword. For a woman, a mother, the answer was stonier and harder.
    • Catelyn (VI)
  • Cruel lands breed cruel peoples.
    • Bran (VI)–Maester Luwin
  • Do you always smell so bad, or did you just finish fucking a pig?
    • Bran (VI)–Theon
  • Listen with your ears, not your mouth.
    • Arya (IX)–Arya
  • But now there were only a hundred men left to guard a thousand doors, and no one seemed to know who should be where, nor care much.
    • Arya (IX)
  • They'll kill for that knighthood, but don't think they'll ever die for it.
    • Tyrion (XI)–Bronn
  • One man on a wall was worth ten beneath it.
    • Tyrion (XI)
  • The rite seemed to require that everyone stand, so Tyrion saw nothing but a row of courtly arses.
    • Tyrion (XI)
  • Lord Bolton, he used to say a naked man has few secrets, but a flayed man's got none.
    • Theon (IV)–Reek
  • It is better to be seen as cruel than foolish.
    • Theon (IV)–Theon
  • Mercy, thought Theon as Luwin dropped back. There's a bloody trap. Too much and they call you weak, too little and you're monstrous ... His father thought only in terms of conquest, but what good was it to take a kingdom if you could not hold it? Force and fear could only carry you so far.
    • Theon (IV)
  • The mountain is your mother ... Cling to her, press her face up against your teats, and she won't drop you.
    • Jon (VI)–Stonesnake
  • I hear all sorts of things as a fool that I never heard when I was a knight.
    • Sansa (IV)–Ser Dontos
  • A dog doesn't need courage to chase off rats ... What do you think a knight is for, girl? You think it's all taking favors from ladies and looking fine in gold plate? Knights are for killing.
    • Sansa (IV)–The Hound
  • “What will you do when he crosses?”
    “Fight. Kill. Die, maybe.”
    “Aren’t you afraid? The gods might send you down to some terrible hell for all the evil you've done.”
    “What evil?” He laughed. “What gods?”
    “The gods who made us all.”
    “All?” he mocked. “Tell me, little bird, what kind of god makes a monster like the Imp, or a halfwit like Lady Tanda’s daughter? If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with.”
    “True knights protect the weak.”
    He snorted. “There are no true knights, no more than there are gods. If you can’t protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world, don’t ever believe any different.”
    Sansa backed away from him. “You're awful.”
    “I'm honest. It’s the world that’s awful.”
    • Sansa (IV)—Sansa Stark and Sandor Clegane
  • ... By the time they carried her off her thighs were bloody again. It was as if her own body had betrayed her to Joffrey, unfurling a banner of Lannister crimson for all the world to see.
    • Sansa (IV)
  • A woman's life is nine parts mess to one part magic ... and the parts that look like magic often turn out to be the messiest of all.
    • Sansa (IV)—Cersei Lannister
  • Sansa, permit me to share a bit of womanly wisdom with you on this very special day. Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.
    • Sansa (IV)—Cersei Lannister
  • Shadows are friends to men in black.
    • Jon (VII)–Qhorin Halfhand
  • He loved the wild more than he loved the Wall.
    • Jon (VII)–Qhorin Halfhand, speaking of Mance Rayder
  • I told you what needed to be done, and left it to you to decide what it would be ... To lead men you must know them, Jon Snow. I know more of you now than I did this morning.
    • Jon (VII)–Qhorin Halfhand
  • Dead men walk and the trees have eyes again. Why should we balk at wargs and giants?
    • Jon (VII)–Qhorin Halfhand
  • In formal battle, discipline is more important than courage.
    • Tyrion (XII)–Tyrion
  • Men fight more fiercely for a king who shares their peril than one who hides behind his mother's skirts.
    • Tyrion (XII)–Tyrion
  • "I hope you like blackberry tarts."
    "I love all sorts of tarts."
    "I've known that for a very long time."
      • Tyrion (XII)–Cersei and Tyrion
  • “Your sons, they...they’re with the gods now.”
    “Are they?” Catelyn said sharply. “What god would let this happen?”
    • Catelyn (VII)—Brienne and Catelyn
  • There are no men like me. There’s only me.
    • Catelyn (VII)—Jaime Lannister
  • Tyrion says that people often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it’s served up.
    • Catelyn (VII)—Jaime
  • So many vows . . . they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or the other.
    • Catelyn (VII)—Jaime
  • I will say, I think it passing odd that I am loved by one for a kindness I never did, and reviled by so many for my finest act.
    • Catelyn (VII)—Jaime
  • Your prize will be the doom of you.
    • Theon (V)–Asha Greyjoy
  • Two hundred men were not an army, but you didn't need thousands to hold a castle as strong as Winterfell. So long as they knew which end of a spear did the killing, they might make all the difference.
    • Theon (V)
  • In the sept they pray for the Mother's mercy but on the walls it's the Warrior they pray to, and all in silence. She remembered how Septa Mordane used to tell them that the Warrior and the Mother were only two faces of the same great god. But if there is only one, whose prayers will be heard?
    • Sansa (V)
  • "Won't your guards protect us?"
    "And who will protect us from my guards? Loyal sellswords are rare as virgin whores ... Do you have any notion what happens when a city is sacked, Sansa? No, you wouldn't, would you? All you know of life you learned from singers, and there's such a dearth of good sacking songs."
    • Sansa (V)—Sansa and Cersei
  • Smugglers do not sound warhorns and raise banners. When they smell danger, they raise sail and run before the wind.
    • Davos (III)
  • A small spoon of victory is just the thing to settle the stomach before battle. It makes the men hungry for a larger helping.
    • Davos (III)–Ser Imry, as recalled by Davos
  • At sea, heavy steel was as like to cost a man his life as to save it.
    • Davos (III)
  • Some of the living swam, some of the dead floated; the ones in heavy mail and plate sank to the bottom, the quick and the dead alike.
    • Davos (III)
  • There were hundreds in the water, drowning or burning or doing a little of both.
    • Tyrion (XIII)
  • Joff had the Antler Men trussed up naked in the square below, antlers nailed to their heads. When they'd been brought before the Iron Throne for justice, he had promised to send them to Stannis. A man was not as heavy as a boulder or a cask of burning pitch, and could be thrown a deal farther.
    • Tyrion (XIII)
  • The guests laughed, but it was a joyless laughter, the sort that can turn into sobbing in half a heartbeat.
    • Sansa (VI)
  • "Tears," she said scornfully as the woman was led from the hall. "The woman's weapon, my lady mother used to call them. The man's weapon is a sword. And that tells us all you need to know, doesn't it?"
    • Sansa (VI)—Cersei, to Sansa
  • After the madness of battle, soldiers often seem to want flesh more than coin.
    • Sansa (VI)–Cersei
  • Tears are not a woman's only weapon. You've got another one between your legs, and you'd best learn to use it. You'll find men use their swords freely enough. Both kinds of swords.
    • Sansa (VI)—Cersei, to Sansa
  • The only way to keep people loyal is to make sure they fear you more than the enemy.
    • Sansa (VI)—Cersei, to Sansa
  • The gods must have been mad to waste manhood on the likes of him ...
    • Sansa (VI)—Cersei, about Lord Gyles
  • When it comes to swords, a queen is only a woman after all.
    • Sansa (VI)—Cersei, to Sansa
  • Drink ... Perhaps it will give you the courage to deal with truth for a change.
    • Sansa (VI)—Cersei, to Sansa
  • The battle fever. He had never thought to experience it himself, though Jaime had told him of it often enough. How time seemed to blur and slow and even stop, how the past and the future vanished until there was nothing but the instant, how fear fled, and thought fled, and even your body. "You don't feel your wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of the armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes. You stop feeling, you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight, the foe, this man and then the next and the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you're not, you're alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing." Battle fever. I am half a man and drunk with slaughter, let them kill me if they can!
    • Tyrion (XIV)
  • Those are brave men" he told Ser Balon in admiration. "Let's go kill them."
    • Tyrion (XIV)–Tyrion
  • Men came at him. Some he killed, some he wounded, and some went away, but always there were more.
    • Tyrion (XIV)
  • Surrounded by a circle of Velaryon spearmen, they fought back to back, they made battle as graceful as a dance.
    • Tyrion (XIV)
  • The southern sky was aswirl with glowing, shifting colors, the reflection of the great fires that burned below. Baleful green tides moved against the bellies of the clouds, and pools of orange light spread across the heavens. The rests and yellows of common flame warred against the emeralds and jades of wildfire, each color flaring and then fading, birthing armies of short-lived shadows to die again an instant later. Green dawns gave way to orange dusks in half a heartbeat. The air itself smelt burnt, the way a soup kettle sometimes smelled if it were left on the fire too long and all the soup boiled away. Embers drifted through the night air like swarms of fireflies.
    • Sansa (VII)
  • Her whole life had been one long flight, it seemed. She had begun running in her mother's womb.
    • Daenerys (V)
  • Strange times are bad for trade.
    • Daenerys (V)–Xaro Xhoan Daxos
  • I am trying to set a price on one of the three living dragons in the world ... It seems to me that one-third of all the ships in the world would be fair.
    • Daenerys (V)–Daenerys
  • Dany found her thoughts returning to the Palace of Dust, one more, as the tongue returns to a space left by a missing tooth.
    • Daenerys (V)
  • I went to the warlocks hoping for answers, but instead they've left me with a hundred new questions.
    • Daenerys (V)–Daenerys
  • The Dothraki distrusted the sea and all that moved upon it. Water that a horse could not drink was water they wanted no part of.
    • Daenerys (V)
  • You should have learned by now, none of us get the things we want.
    • Sansa (VIII)—Cersei, to Sansa
  • Sansa had not heard of Littlefinger doing anything particularly heroic during the battle, but it seemed he was to be rewarded all the same.
    • Sansa (VIII)
  • Knights may keep their truces when dealing with other knights, but they are not so careful of their honor when dealing with those whom they deem outlaw.
    • Theon (VI)–Black Loren
  • If I die, I die friendless and abandoned. What choice did that leave him, but to live?
    • Theon (VI)–Theon.
  • He should thank the gods that Ser Rodrik was not ironborn. The men of the green lands were made of softer stuff, though he was not certain they would prove soft enough.
    • Theon (VI)
  • "Ser Rodrik had you five-to-one."
    "Aye, but he thought us friends. A common mistake."
    • Theon (VI)–Theon and Reek (actually Ramsay Snow).
  • The Bastard's backhand caught him square, and his cheekbone shattered with a sickening crunch beneath the lobstered steel. The world vanished in a red roar of pain.
    • Theon (VI)
  • His wits were coming back to him, however slowly. That was good. His wits were all he had.
    • Tyrion (XV)
  • As shy as a maid on her wedding night, and near as fair. Sometimes a man forgets how pretty a fire can be.
    • Jon (VIII)–Qhorin Halfhand
  • When he slept, he did not dream, not of wolves, nor his brothers, nor anything. Even dreams cannot live up here, he told himself.
    • Jon (VIII)–Jon
  • "Our honor means no more than our lives, so long as the realm is safe. Are you a man of the Night's Watch?"
    "Yes, but–"
    "There is no but. You are, or you are not."
    • Jon (VIII)–Qhorin and Jon
  • If you want my bones, come get them.
    • Jon (VIII)–Qhorin, to Rattleshirt
  • Hush, now, child, I'm much older than you. I can ... die as a I please."
    • Bran (VII)–Maester Luwin, to Rickon Stark

A Storm of Swords (2000)

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"You know nothing, Jon Snow."
  • To pay for his one sweet moment, they took his whole life.
    • Prologue
  • I wonder what the High Septon would say about the sanctity of oaths sworn while dead drunk, chained to a wall, with a sword pressed against your chest?
    • Jaime (I)–Jaime Lannister
  • "I'll leave no innocents to be food for crows."
    "A heartless wench. Crows need to eat as well."
    • Jaime (I)–Brienne and Jaime.
  • A singer once said all maids are fair in silk ... but he never met you, did he?
    • Jaime (I)–Jaime
  • The best we can hope for is to die with swords in our hands.
    • Jaime (I)–Jaime

  • It's better if he's scared of me, she told herself. That way he'll do like I say, instead of something stupid.

    She should be more frightened herself, she knew. She was only ten, a skinny girl on a stolen horse with a dark forest ahead of her and men behind her who would gladly cut off her feet. Yet somehow she felt calmer here than she ever had at Herrenhal.

    • Arya (I)
  • That was the day without a dawn. Slowly the sky brightened around them, but they never saw the sun. Black turned to grey, and colors crept timidly back into the world. The soldier pines were dressed in somber greens, the broadleafs in russets and faded golds already beginning to brown.
    • Arya (I)
  • My sister has mistaken me for a mushroom. She keeps me in the dark and feeds me shit.
    • Tyrion (I)–Tyrion
  • My hirelings betray me, my friends are scourged and shamed, and I lie here rotting, Tyrion thought. I thought I won the bloody battle. Is this what triumph tastes like?
    • Tyrion (I)
  • In the Red Keep a man did his best to hold his tongue. There were rats in the walls, and little birds who talked too much, and spiders.
    • Tyrion (I)
  • Some battles are won with swords and spears, others with quills and ravens.
    • Tyrion (I)–Tywin Lannister
  • A dead enemy is a joy forever.
    • Tyrion (I)–Tyrion
  • Every lord has need of a beast from time to time.
    • Tyrion (I)–Tywin
  • A good threat is often more telling than a blow.
    • Tyrion (I)–Tyrion, quoting Tywin
  • Thirst, hunger, exposure. These were his companions, with him every hour of every day, and he had come to think of them as his friends.
    • Davos (I)
  • Davos had always been a sailor; he was meant to die at sea.
    • Davos (I)
  • How can a father outlive so many strong young sons?
    • Davos (I)–Davos
  • All he needed to do now was nothing. A few moments more, and he would be with his sons now, resting in the cool green mud of the bottom of the sea, with fish nibbling at his face.
    • Davos (I)
  • His refuge was no more than a speck on the charts, in a place that honest sailors steered away from, not toward.
    • Davos (I)
  • If there was one thing Sansa had learned here, it was mistrust.
    • Sansa (I)
  • It made Sansa wince just to watch. They have scarcely finished burying the dead from that last battle, and already they are practicing for the next one.
    • Sansa (I)
  • He knew how to dress and he knew how to smile and he knew how to bathe, and somehow he got the notion that this made him fit to be king.
    • Sansa (I)–Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns, recalling her late son Renly
  • Once the cow's been milked there's no squeezing the cream back up her udder.
    • Sansa (I)—Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns
  • I'm much less boring than these others. I hope that you're fond of fools.
    • Sansa (I)—Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns
  • It is easy to mount a lion and not so easy to get off ... Should you ever have a son, Sansa, beat him frequently so he learns to mind you ... All these kings would do a little bit better if they would put down their swords and listen to their mothers.
    • Sansa (I)—Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns
  • 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.
    • Sansa (I)—Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns
  • All men are fools, if truth be told, but the ones in motley are more amusing than the ones with crowns.
    • Sansa (I)—Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns
  • Courtesy is a lady's armor.
    • Sansa (I)
  • It's dangerous being free, but most come to like the taste o' it.
    • Jon (I)—Ygritte
  • They had numbers, but the Night's Watch had discipline, and in battle discipline beats numbers nine times out of ten, his father had once said.
    • Jon (I)
  • I only sing the songs that better men have made.
    • Jon (I)—Mance Rayder
  • She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of the horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well.
    • Daenerys (I)
  • A wise man never makes an enemy of a king.
    • Daenerys (I)–Danaerys
  • It seems to me that a queen who trusts no one is as foolish as a queen who trusts everyone.
    • Daenerys (I)–Danaerys
  • One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.
    • Daenerys (I)
  • In the world as I have seen it, no man grows rich by kindness.
    • Daenerys (I)—Jorah Mormont
  • How can you be the prince of someplace you might never see again?
    • Bran (I)
  • What good is it to be a skinchanger if you can't wear the skin you like?
    • Bran (I)
  • How can I help you master a gift I do not understand?
    • Bran (I)–Jojen Stark
  • A fat man always sits comfortably, I am thinking, for he takes his pillow wherever he goes.
    • Davos (II)—Salladhor Saan
  • "The crossbow is a coward's weapon."
    "It'll put a bolt in your heart all the same."
    • Jaime (II)—Jaime Lannister and the tavern lad.
  • It was that white cloak that soiled me, not the other way around.
    • Jaime (I))–Jaime Lannister
  • So easy, he remembered thinking. '"A king should die harder than this."
    • Jaime (II)
  • What we want is not always what we get.
    • Tyrion (II)
  • The tip of his tongue ran across his lower lip like a shy pink animal.
    • Tyrion (II)
  • "What of love?"
    "When the sun has set, no candle can replace it."
    • Tyrion (II)–Tyrion Lannister and Ser Loras Tyrell

  • "Symon says there's to be seventy-seven courses and a hundred doves backed into a great pie," Shae gushed. "When the crust's opened they'll all burst out and fly.

    "After which they will roost in the rafters and rain down birdshit on the guests." Tyrion had suffered such wedding pies before. The doves liked to shit on him especially, or so he had always suspected.

    • Tyrion (II)–Tyrion Lannister and Shae
  • There are worse things than dying with a song on your lips.
    • Arya (II)–Tom Sevenstrings
  • Somehow the singing made the miles seem shorter.
    • Arya (II)
  • If a song makes a maid want to take off her clothes and feel the good warm sun kiss her skin, why, is that the singer's fault?
    • Arya (II)–Tom Sevenstrings.
  • When I don't fancy a man's eyes, I put an arrow through one.
    • Arya (II)–Anguy
  • "They're our horses."
    "Meaning you stole them yourselves, is that it? War makes thieves of many honest folk."
    • Arya (II)—Arya and Tom O'Sevens
  • It had been raining for days now, a cold grey downpour that well suited Catelyn's mood.
    • Catelyn (II)
  • How could you do this, Robb. How could you be so heedless, so stupid? How could you be so ... so ... very ... young?
    • Catelyn (II)
  • I've made a botch of everything but the battles, haven't I?
    • Catelyn (II)–Robb Stark
  • A hall is no place for a wolf. He gets restless, you've seen. Growling and snapping. I should have never taken him into battle with me. He's killed far too many men to fear them now.
    • Catelyn (II)–Robb Stark
  • I am not going to banish him just because my wolf doesn't like the way he smells
    • Catelyn (II)–Robb Stark
  • It is too late for ifs, and too late for rescues. All that matters now is vengeance.
    • Catelyn (II)–Catelyn Stark
  • I know your kneeler's knees must be itching, for want of some king to bend to.
    • Jon (II)–Mance Rayder
  • You know nothing, Jon Snow.
    • Jon (II)—Ygritte (repeated often in the rest of the book)
  • If a man does not use his member it grows smaller and smaller, until one day he wants to piss and cannot find it.
    • Jon (II)–Tormund Giantsbane
  • Bowen knows a great deal more about counting swords than he's ever known about using them.
    • Jon (II)–Mance Rayder
  • When the dead walk, walls and stakes and swords mean nothing. You cannot fight the dead, Jon Snow.
    • Jon (II)–Mance Rayder
  • It was easy to lose your way beyond the Wall. Jon did not know that he could tell honor from shame anymore, or right from wrong.
    • Jon (II)
  • It had been so long since she had enjoyed the company of other women, she had almost forgotten how pleasant it could be.
    • Sansa (II)
  • They are children, Sansa thought ... They've never seen a battle, they've never seen a man die, they know nothing.
    • Sansa (II)
  • We'd been sent out by the King's Hand to deal with the outlaws, you see, but now we were the outlaws ...
    • Arya (III)–Harwin
  • He'd been cold for so long he was forgetting what it was like to feel warm.
    • Samwell (I)
  • Littlefinger's gold is made from thin air, with a snap of his fingers.
    • Tyrion (III)–Tyrion Lannister
  • The greatest fools are ofttimes more clever than the men who laugh at them.
    • Tyrion (III)—Tywin Lannister
  • Through stone walls and doors, through night and rain, he still knows the smell of death and ruin.
    • Catelyn (III)
  • The north remembers.
    • Catelyn (III)-Robb Stark
  • They stood among the trees to see the end of the night's dark dance.
    • Catelyn (III)
  • Sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing.
    • Catelyn (III)–Catelyn Stark
  • This was what he was meant for; he never felt so alive as when he was fighting, with death balanced on every stroke.
    • Jaime (III)
  • Any act can be a prayer, if done as well as we are able.
    • Arya (II)–Lady Smallwood
  • In times like these, it is better to be insignificant
    • Arya (II)–Lady Smallwood
  • That was such a slippery word, may. In any language.
    • Daenerys (II)
  • A man who kills for coin has no honor, but at least they are no slaves.
    • Danaerys (II)–Arstan Whitebeard
  • A man cannot sup from the beggar's bowl all his life and stay a man.
    • Danaerys (II)–Danaerys Targaryen
  • There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, that beast stirs.
    • Danaerys (II))–Ser Jorah Mormont
  • Sometimes Old Nan would tell the same story she’d told before, but we never minded, if it was a good story. Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time.
    • Bran (II)—Bran
  • "He likes the stories where the knights fight monsters."
    "Sometimes the knights are the monsters, Bran."
    • Bran (II)—Bran Stark and Meera Reed
  • Shadows only live when given birth by the light.
    • Davos (III)–Melisandre
  • The night is dark and full of terrors, the day is bright and beautiful and full of hope.
    • Davos (III)–Melisandre
  • Do you think I crossed half the world to put yet another vain king on yet another empty throne?
    • Davos (III)–Melisandre
  • Is it treason to say the truth? A bitter truth, but no less true for that.
    • Davos (III)—Alester Florent
  • We look up at the same stars, and see such different things.
    • Jon (III)
  • There's naught to eat in the dark but flesh.
    • Jon (III)–Ygritte
  • A true man steals a woman from afar, t'strengthen the clan.
    • Jon (III)–Ygritte
  • If this is so wrong ... why did the gods make it feel so good?
    • Jon (III)
  • To touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.
    • Danaerys (III)–Quaithe
  • You're prettier with your mouth closed.
    • Sansa (III)–Cersei Lannister
  • The feast seemed to go on forever, yet Sansa tasted none of the food. She wanted it to be done, and yet she dreaded its end.
    • Sansa (III)
  • Somehow the laughter made her hopeful again, if only for a little while.
    • Sansa (III)
  • Courtesy is a lady's armor.
    • Sansa (III)–Sansa
  • All she felt was pity, and pity was death to desire.
    • Sansa (III)
  • A wall is only as strong as the men who defend it.
    • Jon (IV)–Ned Stark, as remembered by Jon
  • How can the night be so beautiful? he asked himself. Why would the stars want to look down on the likes of me?
    • Jaime (IV)–Jaime Lannister
  • I never dreamed how quick the sweet would turn to sour.
    • Jaime (IV)–Jaime Lannister
  • "There will be pain."
    "I'll scream."
    "A great deal of pain."
    "I'll scream very loudly."
    • Jaime (IV)—Qyburn and Jaime
  • Extravagance has its uses.
    • Tyrion (IV)–Tywin Lannister
  • There is a tool for every task, and a task for every tool.
    • Tyrion (IV)–Tywin Lannister
  • A knight's a sword with a horse. The rest, the vows and the sacred oils and the lady's favors, they're silk ribbons tied round the sword. Maybe the sword's prettier with ribbons hanging off it, but it will kill you just as dead.
    • Arya (VI)–Sandor Clegane
  • The crown is crushing him
    • Catelyn (IV)
  • I've won every battle, yet somehow I'm losing the war.
    • Catelyn (IV)–Robb Stark
  • Wars need not be fought until the last drop of blood.
    • Catelyn (IV)–Catelyn Stark
  • The singers make much of kings who die valiantly in battle, but your life is worth more than a song.
    • Catelyn (IV)–Catelyn Stark
  • There is much confusion in any war.
    • Catelyn (IV)–Lothar Frey
  • Men die in war, even men who are young and strong.
    • Catelyn (IV)–Lothar Frey
  • Defeat is a disease, and victory is the cure.
    • Davos (IV)—Axell Florent
  • These little wars are no more than a scuffle of children before what is to come.
    • Davos (IV)–Melisandre
  • There is truth in the flames, but it is not always easy to see.
    • Davos (IV)–Melisandre
  • The sun will not cease to shine if we miss a prayer or two.
    • Arya (VII)—Thoros of Myr
  • He won the war on the battlefield and lost it in the bedchamber, poor fool.
    • Jaime (V)
  • Life would be much simpler if men could fuck themselves, don't you agree?
    • Tyrion (V)–Tyrion Lannister
  • You call us thieves, but at least a thief has to be brave and clever and quick.
    • Jon (V)—Ygritte
  • I'd sooner be stolen by a strong man than be given t'some weakling by my father.
    • Jon (V)—Ygritte
  • A man can own a woman or a man can own a knife, but no man can own both.
    • Jon (V)—Ygritte
  • Men can't own the land no more'n they can own the sea or the sky.
    • Jon (V)—Ygritte
  • All men must die, Jon Snow. But first we'll live.
    • Jon (V)—Ygritte
  • I count no day as lived unless I have loved a woman, slain a foeman, and eaten a fine meal.
    • Danaerys (IV)–Daario Naharis
  • That night the wind was howling almost like a wolf, and there were some real wolves off to the west giving it lessons.
    • Arya (VIII)
  • The oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both.
    • Arya (VIII)—The ghost of High Heart
  • “Her name is Brienne,” Jaime said. “Brienne, the maid of Tarth. You are still maiden, I hope?”
    Her broad homely face turned red. “Yes.”
    ”Oh, good,” Jaime said. “I only rescue maidens.”
    • Jaime (VI)
  • We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.
    • Catelyn (V)–Catelyn Stark
  • If you keep all your treasures in one purse, you only make it easier for those who would rob you.
    • Catelyn (V)–Robb Stark
  • "Some would say it's a poor king who crowns himself with bronze, Your Grace"
    "Bronze and iron are stronger than gold and silver"
    • Catelyn (VI)—Walder Frey and Robb Stark
  • "Maybe we can save her!"
    "Maybe you can. I'm not done living yet."
    • Arya (XI)–Arya Stark and Sandor Clegane.
  • He was tempted to ask what she prayed for, but Sansa was so dutiful she might actually tell him, and he didn't think he wanted to know.
    • Tyrion (VI)
  • When your enemies defy you, you must serve them steel and fire. When they go to their knees, however, you must help them back to their feet. Elsewise no man will ever bend the knee to you. And any man who must say "I am the king" is no king at all.
    • Tyrion (VI)—Tywin Lannister
  • There's a long league's worth of difference between willful and stupid.
    • Tyrion (VI)—Tywin Lannister
  • The old gods paid no more heed to prayer than the new ones, it would seem. Perhaps he should take comfort in that.
    • Tyrion (VI)
  • Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.
    • Tyrion (VI)—Tywin Lannister to Tyrion
  • An ant who hears the words of a king may not comprehend what he is saying ... If sometimes I have mistaken a warning for a prophecy, or a prophecy for a warning, the fault lies in the reader, not the book.
    • Davos (V)–Melisandre
  • We do not choose our destinies. Yet we must ... we must do our duty, no?
    • Davos (V)–Stannis Baratheon
  • Small men curse what they cannot understand.
    • Davos (V)—Melisandre
  • A smuggler had best know men as well as tides, or he would not live to smuggle long.
    • Davos (V)
  • Any man can read, my lord. There is no magic needed, nor high birth.
    • Davos (V)–Maester Pylos
  • The best way to learn a thing was to do it, he had found; sails or scrolls, it made no matter.
    • Davos (V)
  • Only a starving man begs bread from a beggar.
    • Davos (V)
  • It does not matter how brave or brilliant a man is, if his commands cannot be heard.
    • Jon (III)–Ned Stark, as recalled by Jon
  • A man is never so vulnerable in battle as when he flees. A running man is like a wounded animal to a soldier. It gets his bloodlust up.
    • Jon (III)–Ned Stark, as recalled by Jon
  • A man who fears battle wins no victories ...
    • Danaerys (V)–Arstan Whitehead
  • A valiant deed unsung is no less valiant.
    • Tyrion (VII)–Ser Garlan
  • “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. Remember that, Sansa, when you come to play the game.”
    “What...what game?”
    “The only game. The game of thrones.”
    • Sansa (V)—Lord Littlefinger and Sansa Stark
  • A bag of dragons buys a man's silence for a while, but a well-placed quarrel buys it forever.
    • Sansa (V)—Lord Littlefinger
  • I never asked for this crown. Gold is cold and heavy on the head ...
    • Davos (VI)–Stannis Baratheon
  • "The Wall will stop them," Jon heard himself say. He turned and said it again louder. "The Wall will stop them. The Wall defends itself." Hollow words, but he needed to say them, almost as much as his brothers needed to hear them.
    • Jon (VIII)
  • Is there anything so disgusting as frozen sweat?
    • Jon (VIII)–Pyp
  • Arya was tired of making for Riverrun. She had been making for Riverrun for years, it seemed, without ever getting there. Every time she made for Riverrun, she ended up someplace worse.
    • Arya (XII)
  • Is it treason to say a man is mortal?
    • Tyrion (IX)–Ser Oberyn Martell
  • Men are seldom as they appear. You look so very guilty that I am convinced of your innocence.
    • Tyrion (IX)–Ser Oberyn Martell
  • They feared the man I was; the man I am they'd pity.
    • Jaime (VIII)
  • I am speaking to myself, as I was, all cocksure arrogance and empty chivlary. This is what it does to you, to be too good too young.
    • Jaime (VIII)
  • Well, you gave the singers something to make rhymes about, I suppose that's not to be despised.
    • Jaime (VIII)–Jaime Lannister
  • Ser Meryn got a stubborn look on his face. “Are you telling us not to obey the king?”
    “The king is eight. Our first duty is to protect him, which includes protecting him from himself. Use that ugly thing you keep inside your helm. If Tommen wants you to saddle his horse, obey him. If he tells you to kill his horse, come to me.”
    • Jaime (VIII)—Meryn Trant and Jaime Lannister
  • The wind ran salty fingers through her hair.
    • Sansa (VI)
  • The Fingers are a lovely place, if you happen to be a stone.
    • Sansa (VI)—Lord Littlefinger
  • Nothing says home like the smell of a dung fire burning.
    • Sansa (VI)—Lord Littlefinger
  • Nothing discourages unwanted questions as much as a flow of pious bleating.
    • Sansa (VI)—Lord Littlefinger
  • In King's Landing, there are two sorts of people: The players and the pieces.
    • Sansa (VI)—Lord Littlefinger
  • Everyone wants something, Alayne. And when you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him.
    • Sansa (VI)—Lord Littlefinger
  • Which is more dangerous—the dagger brandished by an enemy, or the hidden one pressed into your back by the enemy you never see>
    • Sansa (VI)—Lord Littlefinger
  • A harp can be as dangerous as a sword, in the right hands.
    • Sansa (VI)—Lord Littlefinger
  • The gods sometimes let us glimpse the future as we lay dying.
    • Sansa (VI)–Lady Lysa Arryn
  • Half a mile north, the wildling encampments were stirring, their campsites sending up smoky fingers to scratch against the pale dawn sky.
  • Jon (IX)
  • It was not a life he'd ever dreamed of, but it was a life.
    • Tyrion (X
  • It was almost worth dying to know all the trouble he’d made.
    • Tyrion (X)
  • "You're going to fight that?"
    "I'm going to kill that."
    • Tyrion (X)—Ellaria Sand and Oberyn Martell
  • 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.
    • Tyrion (X)
  • “Have they told you who I am?”...
    “Some dead man.”
    • Tyrion (X)—Oberyn Martell and Gregor Clegane
  • She is brave as well. She had to be, to survive the life she's lived.
    • Daenerys (VI)
  • Dany stared at herself in silence. Is this the face of a conqueror? So far as she could tell, she still looked like a little girl.
    • Daenerys (VI)
  • Flies are the dead man's revenge.
    • Danaerys (VI)–Daario Naharis
  • Harsh justice is still justice.
    • Daenerys (VI)
  • The thing that surprised Dany most was how unsurprised she was.
    • Daenerys (VI)
  • She was Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, khaleesi and queen, Mother of Dragons, slayer of warlocks, breaker of chains, and there was no one in the world that she could trust.
    • Daenerys (VI)
  • If this was power, why did it taste like tedium?
    • Jaime (IX)
  • The hottest fires burn out quickest.
    • Jon (X)–Tormund Giantsbane
  • Sometimes the short road is not the safest ... Sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.
    • Jon (X)–Dalla
  • Strangers are not so strange in a port as they are in little villages.
    • Arya (XIII)
  • Begging for help never gets you any.
    • Arya (XIII)
  • Could there be honor in a lie if it were told for a ... a good purpose?
    • Samwell (IV)–Samwell Tarly
  • The living have no place at the feasts of the dead.
    • Samwell (IV)
  • It's not the walls that make a lord, it's the man.
    • Jon (XI)—Stannis Baratheon
  • Lord Seaworth is a man of humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.
    • Jon (XI)—Stannis Baratheon
  • He wished he'd been able to think of some rousing last words. "Bugger it all" was not like to earn him much of a place in the histories.
    • Tyrion (XI)
  • “Another name? Oh, certainly. And when the Faceless Men come to kill me, I’ll say, ‘No, you have the wrong man, I’m a different dwarf with a hideous facial scar.’”
    Both Lannisters laughed at the absurdity of it all.
    • Tyrion (XI)—Tyrion to Jaime
  • The faithful dog is kicked, and no matter how the spider weaves, he is never loved.
    • Tyrion (XI)–Lord Varys
  • “Who better to command the black cloaks than a man who once commanded the gold cloaks, sire?”
    “Any of you, I would think. Even the cook.”
    • Samwell (V)—Bowen Marsh and Stannis Baratheon
  • What was given once can be given again.
    • Samwell (V)–Stannis Baratheon
  • A toad grows wings and thinks he's a bloody dragon.
    • Samwell (V)—Cotter Pyke
  • Dawn stole into her garden like a thief.
    • Sansa (VII)
  • Outlaws were better at hiding than honest men.
    • Epilogue
  • The gods gave me no gift but birth, and they stinted me there.
    • Epilogue

A Feast for Crows (2005)

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  • Leave spells and prayers to priests and septons and bend your wits to learning truths a man can trust in.
    • Prologue–Archmaester Ryam, as remembered by Pate the Pigboy
  • "What's the use of a candle that casts no light?”
    “It is a lesson,” Armen said, the last lesson we must learn before we don our maester’s chains. The glass candle is meant to represent truth and learning, rare and beautiful and fragile things. It is made in the shape of a candle to remind us that a maester must cast light wherever he serves, and it is sharp to remind us that knowledge can be dangerous. Wise men may grow arrogant in their wisdom, but a maester must always remain humble. The glass candle reminds us of that as well. Even after he has said his vow and donned his chain and gone forth to serve, a maester will think back on the darkness of his vigil and remember how nothing that he did could make the candle burn...for even with knowledge, some things are not possible."
    • Prologue–Pate and Armen the Acolyte
  • The grey sheep have closed their eyes, but the mastiff sees the truth. Old powers waken. Shadows stir. An age of wonder and terror will soon be upon us, an age for gods and heroes.
    • Prologue—Leo Tyrell
  • Every word was bought with pain, but that was the way of the world; a man must fight to live.
    • The Prophet
  • We are born to suffer, that our sufferings might make us strong.
    • The Prophet–Aeron Greyjoy
  • The truth is in our bones, for flesh decays and bone endures.
    • The Prophet
  • Silence is a prince's friend. Words are like arrows ... once loosed, you cannot call them back.
    • The Captain of the Guards—Prince Doran Martell, as recalled by the Captain.
  • Girl or boy, we fight our battles ... but the gods let us choose our weapons
    • The Captain of the Guards—Ser Oberyn Martell, as recalled by Ellaria Sand
  • When the lion falls the lesser beasts move in.
    • Cersei (I)
  • Elsewhere is a big place.
    • Brienne (I)
  • No promise was as solemn as one sworn to the dead.
    • Brienne (I)
  • Who would cloak themselves in shame?
    • Brienne (I)–Ser Illifer
  • It was one thing to slay a lion; it was another to hack his paw off and leave him bewildered.
    • Brienne (I)
  • Before he had lost his sight, the maester had loved books as much as Samwell Tarly did. He understood the way that you could sometimes fall right into them, as if each page was a hole into another world.
    • Samwell (I)
  • A swordsman should be as good as his sword.
    • Samwell (I)–Jon Snow to Sam
  • I can't command you to be brave, but I can command you to hide your fears.
    • Samwell (I)–Jon Snow to Sa
  • The more you give a king the more he wants. We are walking on a bridge of ice with an abyss on either side. Pleasing one king is difficult enough. Pleasing two is hardly possible.
    • Samwell (I)—Jon Snow to Sam
  • Knowledge is a weapon, Jon. Arm yourself well before you ride forth to battle.
    • Samwell (I)—Maester Aemon to Jon Snow
  • Arya never seemed to find the places she set out to reach.
    • Arya (I)
  • When the cold wind blows the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.
    • Arya (I)–Ned Stark, as recalled by Arya.
  • You cannot eat love, nor buy a horse with it, nor warm your house on a cold night.
    • Cersei (II)—Tywin Lannister, recalled by Cersei
  • Name the cow what you will, so long as the milk flows.
    • Cersei (II)–Cersei
  • I wished to understand the nature of death, so I opened the bodies of the living.
    • Cersei (II)–Qyburn
  • A man takes much for granted when he has two hands.
    • Jaime (I)
  • On the morning after the battle, the crows had feasted on victors and vanquished alike, as once they had feasted on Rhaegar Targaryen after the Trident. How much can a crown be worth, when a crow can dine upon a king?
    • Jaime (I)
  • Almost a prayer...but was it the god he was invoking, the Father Above whose towering gilded likeness glimmered in the candlelight across the sept? Or was he praying to the corpse that lay before him? Does it matter? They never listened, either one.
    • Jaime (I)
  • Some lies are love.
    • Sansa (I)—Petyr Baelish to Sansa Stark
  • A lie is not so bad if it is kindly meant.
    • Sansa (I)
  • Men of honor will do things for their children that they would never consider doing for themselves.
    • Sansa (I)—Petyr Baelish to Sansa Stark
  • I am tempted to say this is no game we play, daughter, but of course it is. The game of thrones.
    • Sansa (I)—Petyr Baelish to Sansa Stark
  • I have never met a man I didn't provoke.
    • The Kraken's Daughter (I)–Asha Greyjoy
  • Archmaester Rigney once wrote that history is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.
    • The Kraken's Daughter (I)—Lord Rodrik to Asha Greyjoy
  • No fight is hopeless till it has been fought.
    • The Kraken's Daughter (I)–Asha Greyjoy
  • If there are rocks to starboard and storms to port, a wise captain steers a third course.
    • The Kraken's Daughter (I)–Asha Greyjoy
  • I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.
    • The Kraken’s Daughter (I)—Lord Rodrik to Asha Greyjoy
  • When a dog goes bad, the fault lies with his master.
    • Cersei (III)–Ser Kevan Lannister
  • A woman may weep, but not a queen.
    • Cersei (III)
  • Abed, unclad, we are our truest selves, a man and a woman, lovers, one flesh, as close as two can be. Our clothes make us different people. I would sooner be flesh and blood than silks and jewels.
    • The Soiled Knight–Princess Arianne Martell
  • There have always been men who found it easier to speak vows than to keep them.
    • The Soiled Knight–Ser Arys Oakheart
  • Fear makes even strong men do things they might never do otherwise.
    • The Soiled Knight–Princess Arianne Martell
  • Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old.
    • The Iron Captain (I)—Victarion Greyjoy
  • Only the sound of the waves pounding remained, a roar no man could still.
    • The Drowned Man (I)
  • You’ll find truth in your looking glass, not on the tongues of men.
    • Brienne (IV)—Septa Roelle to Brienne
  • All men lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one great lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it.
    • Arya (II)–The kindly man
  • A man does not need to be a wizard to know truth from falsehood, not if he has eyes.
    • Arya (II)–The kindly man
  • A smile should be a servant, and come only when you call it.
    • Arya (II)–The kindly man
  • In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own. Sometimes they refuse to make the moves you've planned for them. Mark that well, Alayne. It's a lesson that Cersei Lannister still has yet to learn.
    • Alayne (I)—Petyr Baelish
  • Salt a slug and shame a hero, and they shrink right up.
    • Cersei (V)
 
I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war though. That it was.
  • Even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred and first.
    • Brienne (V)–Septon Meribald
  • "The war of the Ninepenny Kings?” asked Hyle Hunt.
    “So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war though. That it was."
    • Brienne (V)—Hyle Hunt and Meribald
  • Some kisses are worth more than yellow gold
    • Samwell (III)–Daeron
  • In the black of night a man asks all the questions he dares not ask by daylight.
    • Samwell (III)–Maester Aemon
  • He blamed Jon Snow and wondered when Jon's heart had turned to stone. Once he asked Maester Aemon that very question, when Gilly was down at the canal fetching water for them. “When you raised him up to be the lord commander,” the old man answered.
    • Samwell (III)
  • A swift sword stroke is a better defense than any shield
    • Jaime (III)–Cersei Lannister
  • Sins can be forgiven. Crimes require punishment.
    • Jaime (III)–Ser Bonifer Hasty
  • Once a man had turned his tail and run from battle he ceased to be a man.
    • The Reaver
  • Wizards may be well and good, but blood and steel win wars.
    • The Reaver–Victarion Greyjoy
  • What a man can do and what he will do are two different things.
    • The Reaver
  • Glory is good, but gold is better.
    • The Reaver–Nute the Barber
  • Only a craven would steal a fruit when he could take the orchard.
    • The Reaver–Euron Greyjoy.
  • The waves may break upon the mountain, yet still they come, wave upon wave, and in the end only pebbles remain where once the mountain stood. And soon even the pebbles are swept away, to be ground beneath the sea for all eternity.
    • The Reaver—Aeron Damphair to Victarion Greyjoy
  • The brave man slays with a sword, the craven with a wineskin.
    • Jaime (IV)–Lancel Lannister
  • For a mute to take a vow of silence would be akin to a legless man giving up the dance.
    • Brienne (VI)–Septon Meribald
  • The path of faith was a crooked one.
    • Brienne (VI)
  • Nothing tarnishes a hero as much as failure.
    • Cersei (VII)
  • You know the best thing about heroes, Jaime? They all die young and leave more women for the rest of us.
    • Jaime (V)–Ser Daven Lannister
  • Why does a man with one pot of gold need another? Men are greedy.
    • Jaime (V)–Genna Lannister Frey
  • In the darkness all of the gods were strangers.
    • The Cat of the Canals
  • Death should hold no fear for a man as old as me, but it does. Isn't that silly? It is always dark where I am, so why should I fear the darkness?
    • Samwell (IV)—Master Aegon
  • All you Westerosi make a shame of loving. There is no shame in loving. If your septons say there is, your seven gods must be demons. In the isles we know better. Our gods gave us legs to run with, noses to smell with, hands to touch and feel. What mad cruel god would give a man eyes and tell him he must forever keep them shut, and never look at allt he beauty in the world? Only a monster god, a demon of the darkness.
    • Samwell (IV)—Kojja Mo to Samwell Tarly
  • "Fuck" had been the first word of the Common Tongue that Xhondo had learned, and he was very fond of it.
    • Samwell (IV)
  • If sinners speak, why should the righteous listen?
    • Cersei (VII)-Septon Reynard
  • You will return to Lord Gyles and inform him that he does not have my leave to die.
    • Cersei (VII)—Cersei to Maester Pycelle
  • On the gallows tree, all men are brothers.
    • Brienne (VII)
  • What little peace and order the five kings left us will not long survive the three queens, I fear.
    • Alayne (II)—Lord Littlefinger
  • Corpses make poor company by night. These were dark and dangerous men, alive. I doubt that death shall have improved them.
    • Brienne (VIII)–Septon Meribald
 
War makes monsters of us all.
  • Justice. I remember justice. It had a pleasant taste. Justice was what we were about when Beric led us, or so we told ourselves. We were king’s men, knights, and heroes... but some knights are dark and full of terrors, my lady. War makes monsters of us all.
    • Brienne (VIII)—Thoros of Myr
  • It is being common-born that is dangerous, when the great lords play their game of thrones.
    • Brienne (VIII)–Septon Meribald
  • That was what men wanted, wasn't it? Soft helpless women that they needed to protect.
    • Brienne (VIII)
  • "You must be blind as well as maimed, Ser. Lift your eyes, and you will see the direwolf still flies above our walls."
    • Jaime (VI)—Brynden Tully to Jaime Lannister
  • The best lies have some truth in 'em ... to give 'em flavor, as it were.
    • Cersei (IX)–Ser Osney Kettleblack
  • Valor is a poor substitute for numbers.
    • Prince Doran Martell—The Princess in the Tower
  • A little mistrust is a good thing in a princess.
    • Prince Doran Martell—The Princess in the Tower
  • We princes make our careful plans and the gods smash them all awry.
    • Prince Doran Martell—The Princess in the Tower
  • Alayne had told the lie so many times that she remembered it that way more oft than not.
    • Alayne (II)
  • Men come and go. They die, lie, or they leave you.
    • Alayne (II)—Lady Myranda Royce
  • When men must live like rats in the dark beneath the earth, they soon run out of pity, as they do of milk and honey.
    • Brienne (VIII)–Thoros of Myr
  • There are those who say it does not matter how a man begins, but only how he ends.
    • Brienne (VIII)–Thoros of Myr
  • The hardest part of any battle is just before, waiting for the carnage to begin.
    • Cersei (X)
  • If you share your plans with no one, no one can betray you.
    • Jaime (VII)—Lord Emmon Frey
  • I'd sooner face nine men than ten. The tenth might have been the one who would have killed me.
    • Jaime (VII)–Jaime Lannister
  • The most perilous part of the voyage was the last.
    • Samwell (V)
  • Gorghon of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with the pleasure of it and think, how sweet, how fine, how good this is...and then her teeth snap shut and your moans turn to screams. That is the nature of prophecy, said Gorghan. Prophecy will bite your prick off every time.
    • Samwell (V)—Maester Marwyn

A Dance with Dragons (2011)

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  • Some skins you never want to wear, boy. You won't like what you'd become ... Men were not meant to leave the earth. Spend too much time in the clouds and you never want to come back down again.
    • Prologue–Haggon
  • It did not seem fair to drown the cabin boy and the captain and all the rest for something he had done, but when had the gods ever been fair?
    • Tyrion (I)
  • Better a mushroom than a sword through your neck, is it not so? Why die with the taste of blood in your mouth when it could be butter and garlic?
    • Tyrion (I)–Illyrio Mopatis
  • The world is one great web, and a man dare not touch a single strand lest all the others tremble.
    • Tyrion (I)—Illyrio Mopatis
  • What one king does, another may undo.
    • Tyrion (I)—Illyrio Mopatis
  • “What could a eunuch hope to find in a brothel?”
    “Even those who lack a man’s parts may still have a man’s heart, Your Grace,” said Grey Worm. “This one has been told that your servant Stalwart Shield sometimes gave coin to the women of the brothels to lie with him and hold him.”
    • Danaerys (I)
  • Man wants to be king of the rabbits, he best wear a pair o' floppy ears.
    • Danaerys (I)–Brown Ben Plumm
  • Never trust a cook, my lord. They'll prune you when you least expect it.
    • Jon (I)–Dolorous Edd
  • Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter.
    • Jon (I)
  • Age makes ruins of us all.
    • Tyrion (II)–Tyrion
  • Gold has its uses, but wars are won with iron.
    • Tyrion (II)–Tywin Lannister to Tyrion
  • The more you give a king, the more he wants.
    • Jon (II)–Jon Snow
  • The strength of the Wall was its height; the length of the Wall was its weakness.
    • Jon (II)
  • No man is free. Only children and fools think elsewise.
    • Tyrion (III)—Tywin Lannister to Tyrion
  • The fisherman drowned, but his daughter got Stark to the Sisters before the boat went down. They say he left her with a bag of silver and a bastard in her belly. Jon Snow, she named him, after Arryn.
    • Davos (I)—Godric Borrell
  • Not to say that the wildlings mean us harm. Aye, we hacked their gods apart and made them burn the pieces, but we gave them onion soup. What’s a god compared to a nice bowl of onion soup?
    • Jon (III)—Edd Tollett
  • Men love to complain about their wives and lords ... Those without wives complain twice as much about their lords.
    • Jon (III)–Jon Snow, quoting Lord Mormont.
  • Making mock of another man's prayer is fool's work.
    • Jon (III)–Jon Snow
  • No. Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon. Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal.
    • Daenerys (II)—Quaithe
  • There is no valor in running for your life.
    • Danaerys (II)–Ser Selmy Barristan
  • It was better to go hungry than to feast upon a friend.
    • Bran (II)
  • A book can be as dangerous as a sword in the right hands.
    • Tyrion (IV)–Haldon
  • Gods and wonders always appear, to attend the birth of kings.
    • Tyrion (IV)
  • Tart fruit and tart women give life its savor.
    • Danaerys (III)–Xaro Xhoan Daxos
  • If you would savor the sweet taste of the fruit, you must water the tree,
    • Danaerys (III)–Xaro Xhoan Daxos
  • Ask yourself, if all men must grub in the dirt for food, how shall any man lift his eyes to contemplate the stars? If each of us must break his back to build a hovel, who shall raise the temples to glorify the gods? For some men to be great, others must be enslaved.
    • Danaerys (III)–Xaro Xhoan Daxos
  • A horse has an honest smell.
    • Danaerys (III)–Danaerys
  • The man who does nothing also takes a risk.
    • Jon (IV)–Ser Richard Horpe
  • You can buy a man with gold, but only blood and steel will keep him true.
    • Tyrion (V)
  • Kings and corpses always draw attendants.
    • Davos (III)
  • Men do not give up their gods so easily.
    • Jon (V)
  • A wall is only as good as the men defending it.
    • Jon (V)–Jon Snow
  • "Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical," he told Haldon, "the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It's the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble."
    • Tyrion (VI)—Tyrion
  • A man grows tired of having no lovers but his fingers.
    • Tyrion (VI)–Tyrion
  • What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children?
    • Danaerys (IV)
  • You are fighting shadows when you should be fighting the men who cast them.
    • Danaerys (IV)–Daario Naharis
  • A warrior who cannot sleep soon has no strength to fight.
    • Danaerys (IV)–Daario Naharis
  • A living man can find the sea more easily than a dead one.
    • The Wayward Bride–Asha Greyjoy.
  • Stopping proved simple, rest came hard.
    • The Wayward Bride
  • With whores, the young ones smell better, but the old ones know more tricks.
    • Tyrion (VII)—Tyrion
  • Is an oxcart an oxcart without an ox?
    • Tyrion (VII)—Tyrion
  • Three kings is two too many.
    • Tyrion (VII)—Tyrion
  • The gods are blind. And men see only what they wish.
    • Tyrion (VII)—Tyrion
  • The dead should not eat better than the living.
    • Davos IV—Garth
  • Yes and no ... can go a long way once you find the right questions.
    • Davos IV–Lord Robett Glover
  • Get the keys and remove those chains from him, before you make me rue the day I raped your mother.
    • Reek (III)—Roose Bolton
  • I am running to and you are running from, and there's a world of difference there.
    • Tyrion (VIII)–Tyrion
  • They chanted in the tongue of Old Volantis, but Tyrion had heard the prayers enough to grasp the essence. Light our fire and protect us from the dark, blah blah, light our way and keep us toasty warm, the night is dark and full of terrors, save us from the scary things, and blah blah blah some more.
    • Tyrion (VIII)
  • We live closer to the green in our bogs and crannogs, and we remember Earth and water, soil and stone, oaks and elms and willows, they were here before us all and will still remain when we are gone.
    • Bran (III)—Jojen Reed
  • “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,” said Jojen. “The man who never reads lives only one.”
    • Bran (III)
  • A man must know how to look before he can hope to see.
    • Bran (III)—Lord Brynden
  • The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it.
    • Bran (III)—Lord Brynden
  • Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come.
    • Bran (III)—Lord Brynden
  • “Men are men, vows are words, and words are wind. You should put guards around the women.”
    “And who will guard the guards?”
    • Jon (VII)—Iron Emmett and Jon Snow
  • Jon Snow had dreamed of leading men to glory just as King Daeron had, of growing up to be a conqueror. Now he was a man grown and the Wall was his, yet all he had were doubts. He could not even seem to conquer those.
    • Jon (VII)
  • What kind of mother has no milk to feed her children?
    • Danaerys (VI)
  • Weddings went more quickly in the north. It came of not having priests.
    • The Prince of Winterfell
  • A gentle heart may be worth more than pride or valor.
    • The Watcher–Prince Doran Martell
  • It is an easy thing for a prince to call the spears, but in the end it is the children who pay the price.
    • The Watcher–Prince Doran Martell
  • Oberyn was ever the viper. Deadly, dangerous, unpredictable. No man dared tread on him. I was the grass. Pleasant, complaisant, sweet-smelling, swaying with every breeze. Who fears to walk upon the grass? But it is the grass that hides the viper from his enemies and shelters him until he strikes.
    • The Watcher–Prince Doran Martell
  • Things can change quickly in the game of thrones.
    • The Watcher–Prince Doran Martell
  • Fire is a fickle thing. No one knows which way a flame will go.
    • Jon (VIII)–Val
  • "This is going to end badly."
    "You say that of everything."
    "Aye, m'lord. Usually I'm right."
    • Jon (VIII)—Eddison Tollett and Jon Snow
  • It is hard to look a hero when mounted on a pig.
    • Tyrion (IX)–Tyrion
  • "You have to be careful around big people. Be jolly and playful with them, keep them smiling, make them laugh, that's what my father always said. Didn't your father ever tell you how to act with big people?"
    "My father called them smallfolk," said Tyrion, "and he was not what you'd call a jolly man."
    • Tyrion (IX)—Penny and Tyrion
  • Prophecy is like a half-trained mule ... It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head.
    • Tyrion (IX)—Tyrion
  • No man has ever died from bending his knee ... He who kneels may rise again, blade in hand. He who will not kneel stays dead. He who will not kneel stays dead, stiff legs and all.
    • The King's Prize–Balon Greyjoy, as recalled by Asha
  • "Aye, men are dying. More will die before we see Winterfell. What of it? This is war. Men die in war. That is as it should be. As it has always been."
    Ser Corliss Penny gave the clan chief an incredulous look. "Do you want to die, Wull?"
    That seemed to amuse the northman. "I want to live forever in a land where summer lasts a thousand years. I want a castle in the clouds where I can look down over the world. I want to be six-and-twenty again. When I was six-and-twenty I could fight all day and fuck all night. What men want does not matter."
    • The King's Prize (I)—Chief Hugo Wull and Ser Corliss Penny
  • Only a fool deserts the winning side.
    • The King's Prize
  • A little brother may live to be a hundred, but he will always be a little brother.
    • The King's Prize
  • Up in the hills we say that autumn kisses you, but winter fucks you.
    • The King's Prize–Wull
  • The sun and moon and stars had been gone so long that Asha was starting to wonder
    • The King's Prize
  • The sky turned from black to white and seemed no brighter.
    • The King's Prize.
  • Some men say there is wisdom in wine. Such men are fools.
    • The Blind Girl–The kindly-voiced man
  • "How long must I be blind?"
    "Until darkness is as sweet to you as light"
    • The Blind Girl–Arya and the waif
  • Most days, she spent more time with the dead than the living.'
    • The Blind Girl
  • Past a certain point, all the dates grow hazy and confused, and the the clarity of history becomes the fog of legend.
    • Jaime (I)–Hoster Blackwood.
  • So long as men remember the wrongs done to their forebears, no peace will ever exist.
    • Jaime (I)–Hoster Blackwood.
  • Silver's sweet and gold's our mother, but once you're dead they're worth less than that last shit you take as you're dying.
    • Danaerys (VIII)–Brown Ben
  • Perhaps I cannot make my people good, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad.
    • Danaerys (IX)
  • When the choice is debt or death, best to borrow.
    • Jon (XI)
  • A fair bargain leaves both sides unhappy, I've heard it said.
    • Jon (XI)—Jon Snow
  • You need not trust a man to use him.
    • Jon (XI)—Jon Snow
  • Some had been heroes, some weaklings, knaves, or cravens. Most were only men—quicker and stronger than most, more skilled with sword and shield, but still prey to pride, ambition, lust, love, anger, jealousy, greed for gold, hunger for power, and all the other failings that afflicted lesser mortals. The best of them overcame their flaws, did their duty, and died with their swords in their hands. The worst...
    The worst were those who played the game of thrones.
    • The Queensguard (I)
  • He did his duty. Some nights, Ser Barristan wondered if he had not done that duty too well.
    • The Queensguard (I)
 
If there are gods to listen, they are monstrous gods who torment us for their sport. Who else would make a world like this, so full of bondage, blood, and pain?
  • Parchments had been signed, but wars were not fought on parchments.
    • Tyrion (XI)
  • When men are dying every hour, no one looks too hard at one more dead man.
    • Tyrion (XI)
  • The most insidious thing about bondage was how easy it was to grow accustomed to it.
    • Tyrion (XI)
  • At night Tyrion would oft hear her praying. A waste of words. If there are gods to listen, they are monstrous gods who torment us for their sport. Who else would make a world like this, so full of bondage, blood, and pain?
    • Tyrion (XI)
  • “You are not wrong.” Jon said. “I do not know. And if the gods are good, I never will.”
    “The gods are seldom good, Jon Snow.”
    • Jon (XII)—Jon Snow and Tormund Giantsbane
  • No dragon chair can replace a dragon no matter how elaborately it's carved.
    • The Discarded Knight (I)
  • She wants fire, and Dorne sent her mud.
    You could make a poultice out of mud to cool a fever. You could plant seeds in mud and grow a crop to feed your children. Mud would nourish you, where fire would only consume you, but fools and children and young girls would choose fire every time.
    • The Discarded Knight (I)
  • The Drowned God did not answer. He seldom did. That was the trouble with gods.
    • The Sacrifice (I)
  • Pain is the price of power.
    • The Ugly Little Girl–Priest
  • The girl had hoped for fog, but the gods ignored her prayers as gods so often did.
    • The Ugly Little Girl (I)
  • Women were always the cruelest where other women were concerned.
    • Cersei (II)
  • When you bugger a man you expect a squeal or two.
    • Tyrion (XII)
  • Blood games were poor training for protecting kings.
    • The Kingbreaker (I)
  • You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.
    • The Kingbreaker (I)—Ser Barristan Selmy to Skahaz Mo Kandaq
  • Men may be fond of maidens, but women like a man who knows what he's about in the bedchamber.
    • The Dragontamer–Gerris Drinkwater.
  • The eunuch had looked death in the face, so near he might have kissed her on the lips.
    • The Queen’s Hand (I)
  • “Men are mad and gods are madder,” she told the grass, and the grass murmured its agreement.
    • Daenerys (X)—Daenerys
  • Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up, she was shitting brown water. The more she drank the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew.
    • Daenerys (X)—Daenerys
  • That is how it is when a man grows as old as Pycelle. Everything see or hear reminds you of something yo saw or heard when you were younger.
    • Epilogue
  • The time to speak of the cold is not when we are standing in it.
    • Epilogue–Grand Maester Pycelle
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