George RR Martin

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

It is one thing to deceive a king, and quite another to hide from the cricket in the rushes and the little bird in the chimney.

If there is food I eat it, in case there is none on the morrow.

The living should smile, for the dead cannot.

If I could pray with my cock I'd be a lot more religious.

What good is this, I ask you? He who hurries through life hurries to his grave.

"What sort of knight beats helpless maids?"

"The one who serves his king ..."

Every night Arya would say their names. "Ser Gregor," she'd whisper to her stone pillow. "Dunsen, Polliver, Chiswyck, Raff the Sweetling, The Tickler and The Hound. Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei." Back in Winterfell, Arya had prayed with her mother in the sept and with her father in the godswood, but there were no gods on the road to Harrenhal, and the names were the only prayer she cared to remember.

So many kings, my tongue grows weary of the word.

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

Have you ever considered that too many answers are the same as no answer at all? ... When a king dies, fancies sprout like mushrooms in the dark.

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.