"The Dead Father’s head. The main thing is, his eyes are open. Staring up into the sky. The eyes a two-valued blue, the blues of the Gitanes cigarette pack. The head never moves. Decades of staring. The brow is noble, good Christ, what else? Broad and noble. And serene, of course, he’s dead, what else if not serene? From the tip of his finely shaped delicately nostriled nose to the ground, fall of five and one half meters, figure obtained by triangulation. The hair is gray but a young gray. Full, almost to the shoulder, it is possible to admire the hair for a long time, many do, on a Sunday or other holiday or in those sandwich hours neatly placed between fattish slices of work. Jawline compares favorably to a rock formation. Imposing, rugged, all that. The great jaw contains thirty-two teeth, twenty-eight of the whiteness of standard bathroom fixtures and four stained, the latter a consequence of addiction to tobacco, according to legend, this beige quartet to be found in the center of the lower jaw. He is not perfect, thank God for that. The full red lips drawn back in a slight rictus, slight but not unpleasant rictus, disclosing a bit of mackerel salad lodged between two of the stained four. We think it’s mackerel salad. It appears to be mackerel salad. In the sagas, it is mackerel salad. Dead, but still with us, still with us, but dead."

"Patricide: Patricide is a bad idea, first because it contrary to law and custom and second because it proves, beyond a doubt, that the father’s every fluted accusation against you was correct: you are a thoroughly bad individual, a patricide!—member of a class of persons universally ill-regarded. It is all right to feel this hot emotion, but not to act upon it. And it is not necessary. It is not necessary to slay your father, time will slay him, that is a virtual certainty. Your true task lies elsewhere."

"“I once heard [Buckminster] Fuller speak for seven straight hours. I only understood a tenth of what he was saying. By the end of the evening there were only five people left in the audience. He’d started with three hundred. I went home and began to make tetrahedrons with Play-Doh and toothpicks at two o’clock in the morning. ...”"

"Well, you gave the singers something to make rhymes about, I suppose that's not to be despised."

"Ser Meryn got a stubborn look on his face. “Are you telling us not to obey the king?” “The king is eight. Our first duty is to protect him, which includes protecting him from himself. Use that ugly thing you keep inside your helm. If Tommen wants you to saddle his horse, obey him. If he tells you to kill his horse, come to me.”"

"The wind ran salty fingers through her hair."

"I am speaking to myself, as I was, all cocksure arrogance and empty chivlary. This is what it does to you, to be too good too young."

"Is it treason to say a man is mortal?"

"Men are seldom as they appear. You look so very guilty that I am convinced of your innocence."

"The Fingers are a lovely place, if you happen to be a stone."

"They feared the man I was; the man I am they'd pity."

"I never asked for this crown. Gold is cold and heavy on the head ..."

""The Wall will stop them," Jon heard himself say. He turned and said it again louder. "The Wall will stop them. The Wall defends itself." Hollow words, but he needed to say them, almost as much as his brothers needed to hear them."

"The most insidious thing about bondage was how easy it was to grow accustomed to it."

"A fair bargain leaves both sides unhappy, I've heard it said."

"You need not trust a man to use him."

"A bag of dragons buys a man's silence for a while, but a well-placed quarrel buys it forever."

"Is there anything so disgusting as frozen sweat?"

"Some had been heroes, some weaklings, knaves, or cravens. Most were only men—quicker and stronger than most, more skilled with sword and shield, but still prey to pride, ambition, lust, love, anger, jealousy, greed for gold, hunger for power, and all the other failings that afflicted lesser mortals. The best of them overcame their flaws, did their duty, and died with their swords in their hands. The worst... The worst were those who played the game of thrones."

"So long as men remember the wrongs done to their forebears, no peace will ever exist."

"Silver's sweet and gold's our mother, but once you're dead they're worth less than that last shit you take as you're dying."

"Perhaps I cannot make my people good, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad."

"A valiant deed unsung is no less valiant."

"When the choice is debt or death, best to borrow."

"Arya was tired of making for Riverrun. She had been making for Riverrun for years, it seemed, without ever getting there. Every time she made for Riverrun, she ended up someplace worse."

"Parchments had been signed, but wars were not fought on parchments."

"Nothing says home like the smell of a dung fire burning."

"“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. Sometimes the best way to baffle them is to make moves that have no purpose, or even seem to work against you. Remember that, Sansa, when you come to play the game.” “What...what game?” “The only game. The game of thrones.”"

"He did his duty. Some nights, Ser Barristan wondered if he had not done that duty too well."

"A man grows tired of having no lovers but his fingers."

"Only a starving man begs bread from a beggar."

"What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children?"

"It does not matter how brave or brilliant a man is, if his commands cannot be heard."

"Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical," he told Haldon, "the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It's the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble."

"You are fighting shadows when you should be fighting the men who cast them."

"The boar can keep his tusks and the bear his claws. There's nothing half so mortal as a grey goose feather."

"Men do not give up their gods so easily."

"How long must I be blind?" "Until darkness is as sweet to you as light"

"A wall is only as good as the men defending it."

"The best way to learn a thing was to do it, he had found; sails or scrolls, it made no matter."

"A warrior who cannot sleep soon has no strength to fight."

"A horse has an honest smell."

"Small men curse what they cannot understand."

"The man who does nothing also takes a risk."

"You can buy a man with gold, but only blood and steel will keep him true."

"A smuggler had best know men as well as tides, or he would not live to smuggle long."

"A man is never so vulnerable in battle as when he flees. A running man is like a wounded animal to a soldier. It gets his bloodlust up."

"If you would savor the sweet taste of the fruit, you must water the tree,"

"A living man can find the sea more easily than a dead one."

"Ask yourself, if all men must grub in the dirt for food, how shall any man lift his eyes to contemplate the stars? If each of us must break his back to build a hovel, who shall raise the temples to glorify the gods? For some men to be great, others must be enslaved."