A Dance with Dragons

She wants fire, and Dorne sent her mud.

You could make a poultice out of mud to cool a fever. You could plant seeds in mud and grow a crop to feed your children. Mud would nourish you, where fire would only consume you, but fools and children and young girls would choose fire every time.

Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up, she was shitting brown water. The more she drank the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew.

Women were always the cruelest where other women were concerned.

“You are not wrong.” Jon said. “I do not know. And if the gods are good, I never will.”

“The gods are seldom good, Jon Snow.”

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

When you bugger a man you expect a squeal or two.

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

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

Pain is the price of power.

The Drowned God did not answer. He seldom did. That was the trouble with gods.

No dragon chair can replace a dragon no matter how elaborately it's carved.

Men may be fond of maidens, but women like a man who knows what he's about in the bedchamber.

The eunuch had looked death in the face, so near he might have kissed her on the lips.

Blood games were poor training for protecting kings.

When men are dying every hour, no one looks too hard at one more dead man.

The girl had hoped for fog, but the gods ignored her prayers as gods so often did.

You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.

That is how it is when a man grows as old as Pycelle. Everything see or hear reminds you of something yo saw or heard when you were younger.

At night Tyrion would oft hear her praying. A waste of words. If there are gods to listen, they are monstrous gods who torment us for their sport. Who else would make a world like this, so full of bondage, blood, and pain?

The time to speak of the cold is not when we are standing in it.

“Men are mad and gods are madder,” she told the grass, and the grass murmured its agreement.

Only a fool deserts the winning side.

The gods are blind. And men see only what they wish.

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

The sky turned from black to white and seemed no brighter.

It is an easy thing for a prince to call the spears, but in the end it is the children who pay the price.

Jon Snow had dreamed of leading men to glory just as King Daeron had, of growing up to be a conqueror. Now he was a man grown and the Wall was his, yet all he had were doubts. He could not even seem to conquer those.

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

Some men say there is wisdom in wine. Such men are fools.

It is hard to look a hero when mounted on a pig.

“Men are men, vows are words, and words are wind. You should put guards around the women.”

“And who will guard the guards?”

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

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.

They chanted in the tongue of Old Volantis, but Tyrion had heard the prayers enough to grasp the essence. Light our fire and protect us from the dark, blah blah, light our way and keep us toasty warm, the night is dark and full of terrors, save us from the scary things, and blah blah blah some more.

Is an oxcart an oxcart without an ox?

Fire is a fickle thing. No one knows which way a flame will go.

The sun and moon and stars had been gone so long that Asha was starting to wonder

The dead should not eat better than the living.

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

Past a certain point, all the dates grow hazy and confused, and the clarity of history becomes the fog of legend.

"Aye, men are dying. More will die before we see Winterfell. What of it? This is war. Men die in war. That is as it should be. As it has always been."

Ser Corliss Penny gave the clan chief an incredulous look. "Do you want to die, Wull?"

That seemed to amuse the northman. "I want to live forever in a land where summer lasts a thousand years. I want a castle in the clouds where I can look down over the world. I want to be six-and-twenty again. When I was six-and-twenty I could fight all day and fuck all night. What men want does not matter."

A horse has an honest smell.

I am running to and you are running from, and there's a world of difference there.

A gentle heart may be worth more than pride or valor.

The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it.

Men do not give up their gods so easily.

"This is going to end badly."

"You say that of everything."

"Aye, m'lord. Usually I'm right."

A little brother may live to be a hundred, but he will always be a little brother.

We live closer to the green in our bogs and crannogs, and we remember Earth and water, soil and stone, oaks and elms and willows, they were here before us all and will still remain when we are gone.

Most days, she spent more time with the dead than the living.'

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.

Yes and no ... can go a long way once you find the right questions.

No man has ever died from bending his knee ... He who kneels may rise again, blade in hand. He who will not kneel stays dead. He who will not kneel stays dead, stiff legs and all.

A man must know how to look before he can hope to see.

"You have to be careful around big people. Be jolly and playful with them, keep them smiling, make them laugh, that's what my father always said. Didn't your father ever tell you how to act with big people?"

"My father called them smallfolk," said Tyrion, "and he was not what you'd call a jolly man."

Up in the hills we say that autumn kisses you, but winter fucks you.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Three kings is two too many.

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.

Kings and corpses always draw attendants.

Things can change quickly in the game of thrones.

What kind of mother has no milk to feed her children?

Stopping proved simple, rest came hard.

The man who does nothing also takes a risk.

With whores, the young ones smell better, but the old ones know more tricks.

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

Weddings went more quickly in the north. It came of not having priests.

Prophecy is like a half-trained mule ... It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,” said Jojen. “The man who never reads lives only one.”

Get the keys and remove those chains from him, before you make me rue the day I raped your mother.

"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."

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

Oberyn was ever the viper. Deadly, dangerous, unpredictable. No man dared tread on him. I was the grass. Pleasant, complaisant, sweet-smelling, swaying with every breeze. Who fears to walk upon the grass? But it is the grass that hides the viper from his enemies and shelters him until he strikes.

"How long must I be blind?"

"Until darkness is as sweet to you as light"

You need not trust a man to use him.

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

What one king does, another may undo.

The more you give a king, the more he wants.

There is no valor in running for your life.

Not to say that the wildlings mean us harm. Aye, we hacked their gods apart and made them burn the pieces, but we gave them onion soup. What’s a god compared to a nice bowl of onion soup?

Never trust a cook, my lord. They'll prune you when you least expect it.

Gods and wonders always appear, to attend the birth of kings.

The strength of the Wall was its height; the length of the Wall was its weakness.

It did not seem fair to drown the cabin boy and the captain and all the rest for something he had done, but when had the gods ever been fair?

Making mock of another man's prayer is fool's work.

Age makes ruins of us all.

The world is one great web, and a man dare not touch a single strand lest all the others tremble.

No man is free. Only children and fools think elsewise.

It was better to go hungry than to feast upon a friend.

“What could a eunuch hope to find in a brothel?” “Even those who lack a man’s parts may still have a man’s heart, Your Grace,” said Grey Worm. “This one has been told that your servant Stalwart Shield sometimes gave coin to the women of the brothels to lie with him and hold him.”

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

Gold has its uses, but wars are won with iron.

No. Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon. Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal.

Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter.

Tart fruit and tart women give life its savor.

The fisherman drowned, but his daughter got Stark to the Sisters before the boat went down. They say he left her with a bag of silver and a bastard in her belly. Jon Snow, she named him, after Arryn.

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

Better a mushroom than a sword through your neck, is it not so? Why die with the taste of blood in your mouth when it could be butter and garlic?

Men love to complain about their wives and lords ... Those without wives complain twice as much about their lords.

Some skins you never want to wear, boy. You won't like what you'd become ... Men were not meant to leave the earth. Spend too much time in the clouds and you never want to come back down again.