Quotes from George R.R. Martin

That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead.

You are grown so very great now, yet the higher a man climbs the farther he has to fall.

Why would the stars want to look down on such as me?

The northern girl. Winterfell's daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leathery wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window.

The old man laid a withered, spotted hand on his shoulder. "It hurts, boy," he said softly. "Oh, yes. Choosing . . . it has always hurt. And always will. I know.

Has my tale turned you speechless? Come, curse me or kiss me or call me a liar. Something.

A fair bargain leaves both sides unhappy.

I will take what is mine with fire and blood.

Small men oft feel a need to prove their courage with unseemly boasts," he declared. "I doubt if he could kill a duck." Tyrion shrugged. "Fetch the duck.

Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.

I stayed sober for this?

When we speak of the morrow nothing is ever certain.

Some gave me soft words and some blunt, some made excuses, some promises, some only lied. In the end words are just wind.

A man could not always be where he belonged, though.

When they finally broke apart, Ygritte was flushed. "You're mine," she whispered. "Mine, as I'm yours. And if we die, we die. All men must die, Jon Snow. But first we'll live.

You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.

The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a little slime will do a man no harm, while if you dance with dragons, you must expect to burn.

Too stupid to learn and too stupid to give up.

She yearned to see her mother again, and Robb and Bran and Rickon… but it was Jon Snow she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her "little sister." She'd tell him, "I missed you," and he'd say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything.

If I die, I die friendless and abandoned. What choice did that leave him, but to live?

Innocent or guilty, a Lannister pays his debts.

Half-truths are worth more than outright lies.

No fight is hopeless till it has been fought.

The Red God takes what is his, lovely girl. And only death may pay for life. You saved me and the two I was with. You stole three deaths from the Red God. We have to give them back. Speak three names and the man will do the rest. Three lives I will give you - no more, no less, and we're done.