"Have you noticed that the rain stopped the instant I had a roof above me? It will start again now that I'm back out. Gods and dogs alike delight to piss on me."

"Why do you let people call you a dog? You won't let anyone call you a knight." "I like dogs better than knights ... A hound will die for you, but never lie to you."

"She got dirt in her mouth but she didn't care, the taste was fine, the taste was mud and water and worms and life."

"Paint stripes on a toad, he does not become a tiger."

"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."

"That's my cursed luck. I kill the poor."

"Boys believe nothing can hurt them, his doubt whispered. Grown men know better."

"Bad enough when the dead come walking. Now the Old Bear wants them talking as well! ... The dead are likely dull fellows, full of tedious complaints—the ground’s too cold, my gravestone should be larger, why does he get more worms than I do..."

"If it's softer than ground and has a roof over it, I call it a bed."

"If it could burn the Lannisters had burned it; if it could die, they'd killed it."

"... [W]hen you've known me longer, you'll learn that I mean everything I say." "Even the lies?" "Especially the lies."

"Part of her wanted to be a swan. The other part wanted to eat one. She had broken her fast on some acorn paste and a handful of bugs. Bugs weren't so bad when you got used to them. Worms were worse, but not so bad as the pain in your belly from days without food."

"Pity filled Catelyn's heart. Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman?"

"... for a moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and heaving, eternal and unknowable."

"I stopped believing in gods the day I saw the Windproud break up across the bay. Any gods so monstrous as to drown my mother and father would never have my worship, I vowed. In King’s Landing, the High Septon would prattle at me of how all justice and goodness flowed from the Seven, but all I ever saw of either was made by men."

"A frightened man is a beaten man"

"When you have seen your kings shit over the rail and turn green in a storm, it was hard to bend the knee and pretend they were gods."

"You wear your honor like a suit of armor, Stark. You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move."

"A crown was worth a little mud and horseshit on his breeches, he supposed."

"Know the men who follow you, and let them know you. Don't ask your men to die for a stranger."

"“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.”"

"Ah, but when the queen proclaims one king and the Hand another, whose peace do they protect?" Lord Petyr flicked at the dagger with his finger, setting it spinning in place. When at last it slowed to a stop, the blade pointed at Littlefinger. "Why, there's your answer. They follow the man who pays them."

"He was always clever, even as a boy, but it is one thing to be clever and another to be wise."

"Jon could not find it in him to pray to any gods, old or new. If they were real, he thought, they were as cruel and implacable as winter."

"They hate me because I'm better than they are" "No. They hate you because you act like you're better than they are."

"Never draw your sword unless you mean to use it."

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."

"Let them see that their words can cut you, and you'll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can't hurt you with it anymore."

"The Iron Islands lived in the past; the present was too hard and bitter to be borne."

"I swear to you, I was never so alive as when I was winning this throne, or so dead as now that I've won it."

"That was the way of war. The smallfolk were slaughtered, while the highborn were held for ransom."

"Wizards die the same as other men, once you cut their heads off."

"Dawn came cruel, a dagger of light."

"You'd best get a bird ready. Mormont will want to send back word." "I wish I could send them all. They hate being caged." "You would too, if you could fly."

"Drink ... Perhaps it will give you the courage to deal with truth for a change."

"The Bastard's backhand caught him square, and his cheekbone shattered with a sickening crunch beneath the lobstered steel. The world vanished in a red roar of pain."

"Knights and lordlings, they take each other captive and pay ransoms, but they don't care if the likes of you yield or not."

"My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind...And a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge."

"A true man does what he will, not what he must."

"He watched them as from a distance, as if he still sat in the window of his bedchamber looking down on the yard below, seeing everything yet a part of nothing."

"A man agrees with god as a raindrop with the storm."

"I've never liked thinking back, going back in time, reviewing the day or the week or the life. To crush and gut. To eviscerate. Power works best when there's no memory attached."

"There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist?"

"But whatever the sundry facts, I'm not so different from you in your inner life in the sense that we're all uncontrollable."

"People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night. I carry this thought, the child's mystery and terror of this thought, I feel this immensity in my soul every second of my life."

"He stood in the street. There was nothing to do. He hadn't realized this could happen to him. The moment was empty of urgency and purpose. He hadn't planned on this. Where was the life he'd always led? There was nowhere he wanted to go, nothing to think about, no one waiting. How could he take a step in any direction if all directions were the same?"

"I can see the scornful humor and pity in what I do sometimes. And I can almost enjoy it on the level of being helpless."

"I have become an enigma to myself. So said Saint Augustine. And herein lies my sickness."

"Even when you self-destruct, you want to fail more, lose more, die more than others, stink more than others. In the old tribes the chief who destroyed more of his property than the other chiefs was the most powerful."