"We'll never find that one, and I'll be blamed," announced Edd Tollett, the dour grey-haired squire everyone called Dolorous Edd. "Nothing ever goes missing that they don't look at me, ever since that time I lost my horse. As if that could be helped. He was white and it was snowing, what did they expected."

"Half-truths are worth more than outright lies."

"The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord," Mirri said. "Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold them back."

"The man is as useless as nipples on a breastplate."

"The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid."

"We're children. We're supposed to be childish."

"Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next."

"...grief can derange even the strongest and most disciplined of minds."

"Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night."

"Dragons are fire made flesh."

"The gods are blind and men see only what they wish."

"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."

"What are you doing to me? he asked the crow, tearful. Teaching you how to fly. "I can't fly! You're flying right now. "I'm falling! Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said."

"Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both."

"There are gods and there are true knights too. All the stories can't be lies."

"Over the years, more than one reviewer has described my fantasy series, 'A Song of Ice and Fire', as historical fiction about history that never happened, flavoured with a dash of sorcery and spiced with dragons. I take that as a compliment."

"They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a man's laughter freezes in his throat and chokes him to death, Ned said evenly. "Perhaps that is why the Starks have so little humor."

"There is power in a King's blood."

"A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor."

"So do not waste my time. It is the most precious thing I have, time. It is the most precious thing any of us have."

"The day will come when you need them to respect you, even fear you a little. Laughter is poison to fear."

"I swear to you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one."

"There was part of me that wanted to see the world and travel to distant places, but I could only do it in my imagination, so I read ferociously and imagined things."

"Be careful you don't cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with.''Girls don't shave', Arya said.'Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa's legs?"

"Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love."

"A great battle is a terrible thing," the old knight said, "but in the midst of blood and carnage, there is sometimes also beauty, beauty that could break your heart."

"The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons."

"The lord of light made the sun and moon and stars to light our day, and gave us fire to keep the night at bay."

"I sailed up to the cold stars but they were cold no longer, and I grew bigger and bigger until I was the stars and they were me, and I was Union, and for a single solitary glittering instant I was the universe."

"A shy smile, strong arms, clever fingers, and two sure swords. What more could any woman want?"

"I never understood what Jaime saw in you, apart from his own reflection."

"Beauty can be treacherous."

"As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons."

"A crisp roast chicken would set the world aright."

"It was pleasant to think that men still sang, even in the midst of butchery and famine."

"Sometimes, the best thing you can do is nothing. Catelyn."

"No one has ever died of restlessness, but rashness is another matter. We've planted seeds, let them grow."

"The looters comes with the carrion crows after every battle."

"Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond."

"The years pass in their hundreds and their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so they seem... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes."

"History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again."

"Lem glowered. "Your lion friends ride into some village, take all the food and every coin they find, and call it foraging. the wolves as well, so why not us? no one robbed you, dog. You just been good and foraged."

"Yes - 90% of fantasy is crap. And so is 90% of science fiction and 90% of mystery fiction and 90% of literary fiction."

"...How would you like to die, Tyrion son of Tywin?""In my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a maiden's mouth around my cock, at the age of eighty," he replied."

"All men must die. We are but death's instruments, not death himself."

"Power is a trick. It lies where we believe it lies."

"She had no time for sleep, with the weight of the world upon her shoulders. And she feared to dream. Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the Other, who would drag us all into his eternal night."

"The gods made our bodies as well as our souls, is it not so? They give us voices, so we might worship them with song. They give us hands, so we might build them temples. And they give us desire, so we might mate and worship them in that way."

"Death, there will be death, aye. Your lordship lost a son at the Red Wedding. I lost four upon the Blackwater. And why? Because the Lannisters stole the throne. Go to King's Landing and look on Tommen with your own eyes, if you doubt me. A blind man could see it. What does Stannis offer you? Vengeance. Vengeance for my sons and yours, for your husbands and your fathers and your brothers. Vengeance for your murdered lord, your murdered king, your butchered princes. Vengeance!"

"Any cat may stare into a fire and see red mice play."