A Feast for Crows

Men come and go. They die, lie, or they leave you.

The most perilous part of the voyage was the last.

If you share your plans with no one, no one can betray you.

I'd sooner face nine men than ten. The tenth might have been the one who would have killed me.

When men must live like rats in the dark beneath the earth, they soon run out of pity, as they do of milk and honey.

There are those who say it does not matter how a man begins, but only how he ends.

Gorghon of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with the pleasure of it and think, how sweet, how fine, how good this is...and then her teeth snap shut and your moans turn to screams. That is the nature of prophecy, said Gorghan. Prophecy will bite your prick off every time.

The hardest part of any battle is just before, waiting for the carnage to begin.

Alayne had told the lie so many times that she remembered it that way more oft than not.

A smile should be a servant, and come only when you call it.

I am tempted to say this is no game we play, daughter, but of course it is. The game of thrones.

There have always been men who found it easier to speak vows than to keep them.

Fear makes even strong men do things they might never do otherwise.

In the darkness all of the gods were strangers.

We princes make our careful plans and the gods smash them all awry.

Only the sound of the waves pounding remained, a roar no man could still.

Why does a man with one pot of gold need another? Men are greedy.

Once a man had turned his tail and run from battle he ceased to be a man.

The more you give a king the more he wants. We are walking on a bridge of ice with an abyss on either side. Pleasing one king is difficult enough. Pleasing two is hardly possible.

What a man can do and what he will do are two different things.

"The war of the Ninepenny Kings?” asked Hyle Hunt.

“So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war though. That it was."

You will return to Lord Gyles and inform him that he does not have my leave to die.

Death should hold no fear for a man as old as me, but it does. Isn't that silly? It is always dark where I am, so why should I fear the darkness?

Justice. I remember justice. It had a pleasant taste. Justice was what we were about when Beric led us, or so we told ourselves. We were king’s men, knights, and heroes... but some knights are dark and full of terrors, my lady. War makes monsters of us all.

I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.

When a dog goes bad, the fault lies with his master.

The path of faith was a crooked one.

If sinners speak, why should the righteous listen?

You’ll find truth in your looking glass, not on the tongues of men.

Nothing tarnishes a hero as much as failure.

I have never met a man I didn't provoke.

"Fuck" had been the first word of the Common Tongue that Xhondo had learned, and he was very fond of it.

On the gallows tree, all men are brothers.

A little mistrust is a good thing in a princess.

He blamed Jon Snow and wondered when Jon's heart had turned to stone. Once he asked Maester Aemon that very question, when Gilly was down at the canal fetching water for them. “When you raised him up to be the lord commander,” the old man answered.

Men of honor will do things for their children that they would never consider doing for themselves.

"You must be blind as well as maimed, Ser. Lift your eyes, and you will see the direwolf still flies above our walls."

Salt a slug and shame a hero, and they shrink right up.

Corpses make poor company by night. These were dark and dangerous men, alive. I doubt that death shall have improved them.

Sins can be forgiven. Crimes require punishment.

Arya never seemed to find the places she set out to reach.

For a mute to take a vow of silence would be akin to a legless man giving up the dance.

The waves may break upon the mountain, yet still they come, wave upon wave, and in the end only pebbles remain where once the mountain stood. And soon even the pebbles are swept away, to be ground beneath the sea for all eternity.

Almost a prayer...but was it the god he was invoking, the Father Above whose towering gilded likeness glimmered in the candlelight across the sept? Or was he praying to the corpse that lay before him? Does it matter? They never listened, either one.

I wished to understand the nature of death, so I opened the bodies of the living.

Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old.

A swift sword stroke is a better defense than any shield

A woman may weep, but not a queen.

Wizards may be well and good, but blood and steel win wars.

You know the best thing about heroes, Jaime? They all die young and leave more women for the rest of us.

Abed, unclad, we are our truest selves, a man and a woman, lovers, one flesh, as close as two can be. Our clothes make us different people. I would sooner be flesh and blood than silks and jewels.

A lie is not so bad if it is kindly meant.

Archmaester Rigney once wrote that history is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.

Even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred and first.

In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own. Sometimes they refuse to make the moves you've planned for them. Mark that well, Alayne. It's a lesson that Cersei Lannister still has yet to learn.

Name the cow what you will, so long as the milk flows.

Knowledge is a weapon, Jon. Arm yourself well before you ride forth to battle.

When the cold wind blows the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

Glory is good, but gold is better.

The brave man slays with a sword, the craven with a wineskin.

You cannot eat love, nor buy a horse with it, nor warm your house on a cold night.

No fight is hopeless till it has been fought.

A man does not need to be a wizard to know truth from falsehood, not if he has eyes.

That was what men wanted, wasn't it? Soft helpless women that they needed to protect.

Some kisses are worth more than yellow gold

What little peace and order the five kings left us will not long survive the three queens, I fear.

On the morning after the battle, the crows had feasted on victors and vanquished alike, as once they had feasted on Rhaegar Targaryen after the Trident. How much can a crown be worth, when a crow can dine upon a king?

It is being common-born that is dangerous, when the great lords play their game of thrones.

The best lies have some truth in 'em ... to give 'em flavor, as it were.

A man takes much for granted when he has two hands.

Only a craven would steal a fruit when he could take the orchard.

If there are rocks to starboard and storms to port, a wise captain steers a third course.

In the black of night a man asks all the questions he dares not ask by daylight.

Valor is a poor substitute for numbers.

A swordsman should be as good as his sword.

I can't command you to be brave, but I can command you to hide your fears.

All you Westerosi make a shame of loving. There is no shame in loving. If your septons say there is, your seven gods must be demons. In the isles we know better. Our gods gave us legs to run with, noses to smell with, hands to touch and feel. What mad cruel god would give a man eyes and tell him he must forever keep them shut, and never look at allt he beauty in the world? Only a monster god, a demon of the darkness.

All men lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one great lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it.

Who would cloak themselves in shame?

Every word was bought with pain, but that was the way of the world; a man must fight to live.

We are born to suffer, that our sufferings might make us strong.

Leave spells and prayers to priests and septons and bend your wits to learning truths a man can trust in.

The grey sheep have closed their eyes, but the mastiff sees the truth. Old powers waken. Shadows stir. An age of wonder and terror will soon be upon us, an age for gods and heroes.

Elsewhere is a big place.

It was one thing to slay a lion; it was another to hack his paw off and leave him bewildered.

Before he had lost his sight, the maester had loved books as much as Samwell Tarly did. He understood the way that you could sometimes fall right into them, as if each page was a hole into another world.

No promise was as solemn as one sworn to the dead.

The truth is in our bones, for flesh decays and bone endures.

Silence is a prince's friend. Words are like arrows ... once loosed, you cannot call them back.

"What's the use of a candle that casts no light?”

“It is a lesson,” Armen said, the last lesson we must learn before we don our maester’s chains. 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 serves, and it is sharp to remind us that knowledge can be dangerous. Wise men may grow arrogant in their wisdom, but a maester must always remain humble. The glass candle reminds us of that as well. Even after he has said his vow and donned his chain and gone forth to serve, a maester will think back on the darkness of his vigil and remember how nothing that he did could make the candle burn...for even with knowledge, some things are not possible."

Girl or boy, we fight our battles ... but the gods let us choose our weapons

When the lion falls the lesser beasts move in.