A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.
Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He’ll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he’s copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day.
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.
You are the blood of the dragon. You can make a hat.
It was queer how sometimes a child’s innocent eyes can see things that grown men are blind to.
Syrio says that every hurt is a lesson, and every lesson makes you better.
A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you’ll know the debt is paid. – Tyrion.
A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.
But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. ‘Life is not a song, sweetling,’ he’d told her, ‘You may learn that one day to your sorrow.’ In life, the monsters win, she told herself.
I don’t ever want t’ leave this cave, Jon Snow. Not ever.
This is not Winterfell’, he told him as he cut his meat with fork and dagger. ‘On the Wall, a man gets only what he earns. You’re no ranger, Jon, only a green boy with the smell of summer still on you.
Men see what they expect to see.
In my dreams, I kill him every night,′ Robert admitted. ‘A thousand deaths will still be less than he deserves’.
Jon shrugged. ‘Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords but not the arms. I did not make the rules, little sister.
It’s not,” Mormont told him. “Gods save us, boy, you’re not blind and you’re not stupid. When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron Throne?
Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.
Your brother was a terrible traitor, I know, but if we start killing men at weddings they’ll be even more frightened of marriage than they are presently.
Queen you shall be, until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear.
To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.
There are worse things than dying with a song on your lips.