The Marquis de Carabas always had a plan, and he always had a fallback plan; and beneath these plans he always had a real plan, one that he would not even let himself know about, for when the original plan and the fallback plan had both gone south.
The wolves will come again,” said Jojen solemnly.
He cries behind his wall, I think, and no one knows, not even he. And no one will ever know, and in the end he’ll always be alone in smiling pain.
He spoke of dreams and never named the dreamer, of a glass candle that could not be lit and eggs that would not hatch. He said the sphinx was the riddle, not the riddler, whatever that meant.
Terrible times breed terrible things, my lord.
You’ll be sewing all through winter. When the spring thaw comes, they will find your body with a needle still locked tight between your frozen fingers.
Guard your tongue before it digs your grave.
The night is dark and full of turnips,” he announced in a solemn voice. “Let us all pray for venison, my children, with some onions and a bit of tasty gravy.
A man may prefer the taste of hippocras, yet if you set a tankard of ale before him, he will quaff it quick enough.
Such a happy sound, it makes me want to scoop out someone’s eyeballs with a spoon.
This is a night for song and sin and drink, for come the morrow, the virtuous and the vile burn together.
His hand reached for his throat, fumbling for the small leather pouch he always wore about his neck. Inside he kept the bones of the four fingers his king had shortened for him, on the day he made Davos a knight. My luck. His shortened fingers patted at his chest, groping, finding nothing. The pouch was gone, and the fingerbones with them. Stannis could never understand why he’d kept the bones. “To remind me of my king’s justice,” he whispered through cracked lips. But now they were gone.
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?
And I know that a king protects his people, or he is no king at all.
Cats never weep, she told herself, no more than wolves. It’s just a stupid dream.
Seven hundred feet above, the sentries heard and raised their warhorns to their lips. The sound rang out, echoing off the Wall and out across the world. Ahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. One long blast. For a thousand years or more, that sound had meant rangers coming home. Today it meant something else. Today it called the free folk to their new homes.
If you would sooner drown in wine, say the word and it shall be done, and quickly. Drowning cup by cup wastes time and wine both.
Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of the promises he’d made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he’d paid to keep them.
You ought to thank me for killing your enemy,” Jon said finally, “and curse me for killing your friend.
For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both.