George RR Martin

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.

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

What one king does, another may undo.

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