Quotes from George R.R. Martin

Tomorrow's trials concerned her more than yesterday's triumphs.

The sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler. Do you knows what that means? No. Is it a riddle?

the fine stitching and well-carded wool of his supposedly unobtrusive cloak making him stand out like blood on a wedding dress.

Some mate," Karl Framm said with contempt. "Hell, that little stern-wheeler we're chasin' don't draw nothin'. After a good rain, she could steam halfway across the city of N'Orleans without ever noticin' that she'd left the river.

Be open where you can and stealthy where you must

And he spoke very slowly, in a voice that was also like fog, that drifted and curled and hid things, and you knew that there were mysteries there and things brooding just out of sight and far-off lights that you would never reach.

Shall I ask again?" wondered Xaro. "No, I know that smile. It is a cruel queen who dices with men's hearts. Humble merchants like myself are no more than stones beneath your jeweled sandals." A single tear ran slowly down his pale white cheek.

All fiction has to have a certain amount of truth in it to be powerful.

Underneath his steal and wool and boiled leather, Jaime Lannister was a tapestry of cuts and scabs and bruises.

The king eats, Robert had said, and the Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed. Yet he had gotten it wrong. The king dies, Ned Stark thought, and the Hand is buried.

Defeat is a disease, and victory is the cure.

Bones were bones; these days, nothing was easier to come by.

When men are starving and sick of fear, they look for a savior.

But it did no good to brood on lost battles and roads not taken.

A true knight is cleanly as well as godly.

Words are wind, and men will lie to get their way, as any maid could tell you.

Oh, so poignant'' said Varys. ''And yet, it is truly said that blood runs truer than oaths

You lie," he said. "All men lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it ... though some small part of them will always know that it is still a lie, and that will show upon their faces.

Woman?" She chuckled. "Is that meant to insult me? I would return the slap, if I took your for a man.

Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong. What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms... Or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

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." Arya didn't think it was funny. "I hate needlework!" she said with passion. "It's not fair!

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.

They had well-fed faces and laughter that was made cruel by its context the way a gem could be made ugly by being set in tin.

Snow, the boy is called," Pycelle said unhelpfully. "I glimpsed him once at Winterfell," the queen said, "though the Starks did their best to hide him. He looks very like his father." Her husband's by-blows had his look as well, though at least Robert had the grace to keep them out of sight.