The crow commands, the captive must obey.
When all the trees have been cut down and all the animals have been hunted to extinction, when all the waters are polluted and the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
Once a turncloak, ever a turncloak,” Lord Cregan said. “You rose up in rebellion against your lawful queen and helped drive her from this city to her death, raised up your own squire in her place, then abandoned him to save your worthless hide. The realm will be a better place without you.” When Ser Perkin protested that he had been pardoned for those crimes, Lord Stark replied, “Not by me.
Faced with a choice between “a dead father, cold in the ground, and a living woman, warm and willing in his arms, the boy showed surprising sense for one so highborn, and chose love over honor,” says Mushroom.
Wylla.” Lord Wyman smiled. “Did you see how brave she was? Even when I threatened to have her tongue out, she reminded me of the debt White Harbor owes to the Starks of Winterfell, a debt that can never be repaid. Wylla spoke from the heart, as did Lady Leona. Forgive her if you can, my lord. She is a foolish, frightened woman, and Wylis is her life. Not every man has it in him to be Prince Aemon the Dragonknight or Symeon Star-Eyes, and not every woman can be as brave as my Wylla.
Queen Visenya put a sword into her son’s hand when he was three. Supposedly the first thing he did with the blade was butcher one of the castle cats.
The Iron Throne was forged with fire and steel and terror, it is said, but once the throne had cooled, it became the seat of justice for all Westeros.
A thing without a name has no substance. If it existed, it would have a name. And, likewise, if you give a thing a name, somewhere, on some level, the thing named will exist, will come to be.
Money buys a man’s silence for a time. A bolt in the heart buys it forever.
Stannis Baratheon turned away from the window, and the ghosts who moved upon the southern sea.
Be brave, she told herself. Be brave, like a lady in a song.
Oh, my sweet summer child,” Old Nan said quietly, “what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.
The man who fears losing has already lost. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Never do what they expect.
All the grief has been burned out of me.
Darkness, Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind to devour her. If she looked back she was lost.
I’ll have no songs about how brave you died, Kingmaker. There’s tens o’thousands dead on your account.
Jaehaerys the Conciliator would sit the Iron Throne for fifty-five years, and many a knight would wear a white cloak in his service during that long reign, more than any other monarch could boast. But it was rightly said that never did any Targaryen possess a Kingsguard who could equal the boy king’s first Seven.
Visenya, eldest of the three siblings, was as much a warrior as Aegon himself, as comfortable in ringmail as in silk.
Sixteen Targaryens followed Aegon the Dragon to the Iron Throne, before the dynasty was at last toppled in Robert’s Rebellion. They numbered amongst them wise men and foolish, cruel men and kind, good men and evil. Yet if the dragon kings are considered solely on the basis of their legacies, the laws and institutions and improvements they left behind, the name of King Aegon I belongs near the top of the list, in peace as well as war.
So there is magic beyond the Wall after all. He found himself thinking of his sisters, perhaps because he’d dreamed of them last night. Sansa would call this an enchantment, and tears would fill her eyes at the wonder of it...