Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.
Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold.
Balon is dead! The king is dead! Yet a king will come again! For what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger! A king will rise!
I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine,” Ned said, “but that was not one of them.
Promise me, Ned, she had whispered.
Robert got a pair of twins on a serving wench at Casterly Rock, three years ago when he went west for Lord Tywin’s tourney. Cersei had the babes killed, and sold the mother to a passing slaver.
One day Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.
She had been making for Riverrun for years, it seemed, without ever getting there.
Time slept when swords woke.
An honorable death is well and good, but if the life at stake is not your own, what then?
The things I do for love,” it said. Bran screamed. The crow took to the air, cawing. Not that, it shrieked at him. Forget that, you do not need it now, put it aside, put it away. It landed on Bran’s shoulder, and pecked at him, and the shining golden face was gone. Bran.
No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap.
Seasoned killers all, thought Selmy, but it is one thing to face a foe in the pit when his coming is heralded by horns and drums and another to find a hidden killer before he can strike.
His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. “I hate you,” she whispered.
We are the ironborn, and once we were conquerors. Our writ ran everywhere the sound of the waves was heard. My brother would have be content with the cold and dismal north, my niece with even less... but I shall give you Lannisport. Highgarden. The Arbor. Oldtown. The riverlands and the Reach, the kingswood and the rainwood, Dorne and the marches, the Mountains of the Moon and the Vale of Arryn, Tarth and the Stepstones. I say we take it all! I say, we take Westeros.
He has hands like two white spiders.
No more than he knew that the Beggar King would die young, or that Khal Drogo would follow him into the grave. Very little of what the fat man has anticipated has come to pass.
You Starks are hard to kill,” Jon agreed.
Woman?′ She chuckled. ‘Is that meant to insult me? I’d return the slap, if I took you for a man.
Save yourself some pain, girl, and give him what he wants.