"Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle."

"Man wants to be the king o' the rabbits, he best wear a pair o' floppy ears."

"Surely the Gods did not bring me safe through fire and sea only to kill me with a flux."

"I try to make the readers feel they've lived the events of the book. Just as you grieve if a friend is killed, you should grieve if a fictional character is killed. You should care. If somebody dies and you just go get more popcorn, it's a superficial experience isn't it?"

"Never speak of defeat before battle."

"I have never forgotten, and I can't imagine you have, and I've thought of it over the years. It was so good, when it was good, I kept thinking. How could it go wrong?"

"I will hurt you for this. I don't know how yet, but give me time. 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."

"Disease could wipe out an army quicker than any battle."

"No singer would ever make a song about that battle. No maester would ever write down an account for one of the Reader's beloved books. No banners flew, no warhorns moaned, no great lord called his men about him to hear his final ringing words. They fought in the predawn gloom, shadow against shadow, stumbling over roots and rocks, with mud and rotting leaves beneath their feet."

"A man can own a woman, and a man can own a knife, but no man can own both."

"Some words are wind, ser. Some are treason."

"One King means peace."

"People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up."

"Hard hands and no sense of humor makes for a bad marriage."

"It was a cruel fate, Yet not so cruel as Mago's will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh."

"Misery loves company, as someone unbearably trite said once."

"Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the other who would drag us all into the eternal light."

"She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honour, for love."

"Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it."

"No man should live longer than his teeth."

"Make no choice, and you have chosen. Failure to decide, because you lack the right, is itself a decision, First Councilor. In abstaining, you vote."

"Only a starving man asks bread from a begger."

"The dog barked and wagged his tail. He was a huge, shaggy creature, ten stone of dog at least, but friendly. 'Who does he belong to?' asked Podrick. 'Why, to himself, and to the Seven. As to his name, he has not told me what it is. I call him Dog."

"Winter is coming."

"His eyes were open wounds beneath his heavy brows, a blue as dark as the sea by night."

"The man who fears losing has already lost."

"Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well."

"A man who hates music can't be trusted."

"He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death."

"Never drink with Dornishmen when the moon is full."

"I take no joy in mead nor meat, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once."

"Writing is like sausage making in my view, you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it."

"These woods are as empty as you think, he had said. You cannot know what the light might summon from the darkness."

"Oh yes, it hurts at times to be alone among the stars. But it hurts a lot more to be alone at a party. A lot more."

"Remember Old Nan's stories, Bran. Remember the way she told them, the sound of her voice. So long as you do that, part of her will always be alive in you."

"Winter is coming, warned the Stark words, and truly it had come to them with a vengeance. But it is high summer for House Lannister. So why am I so bloody cold?"

"Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come."

"...the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.""...a ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is."

"My first rule of war, Cat-never give the enemy his wish."

"The glass candle is meant to represent truth and learning, rare and beautiful and fragile things. It is made in the shape of a candle to remind us that a maester must cast light wherever he serve, and it is a sharp to remind us that knowledge can be dangerous."

"What man wants does not matter."

"We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy."

"The fire that burns against the cold."

"He has a sellsword's conscience, she realized then. That is to say none at all."

"Can you drown in grief? She turned away sharply, angry with her own frailty. She had no time for the luxury of self-pity."

"A book can be as dangerous as a sword in the right hands."

"Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written."

"A man is never so vulnerable in a battle as when he flees," Lord Eddard has told Jon once. "A running man is like a wounded animal to a soldier. It gets his bloodlust up."

"Well, the drums gave me headaches, the sunlight flashing on my armor cooked me up like harvest day, and those magnificent destriers shit everywhere."

"Kill the boy and let the man be born."