George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
62 quotes
"She had no time for sleep, with the weight of the world upon her shoulders. And she feared to dream. Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the Other, who would drag us all into his eternal night."
"Small men oft feel a need to prove their courage with unseemly boasts," he declared. "I doubt if he could kill a duck."Tyrion shrugged. "Fetch the duck."
"He'll be down with the books. My old septon used to say books are dead men talking. Dead men should keep quiet is what I say. No one wants to hear a dead man's yabber."
"Perhaps I cannot make my people good, she told herself, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad."
"A book can be as dangerous as a sword in the right hands, said Haldon."
"Gold has its uses, but war is won with iron."
"One voyage to the East and a man could live as rich as a lord until the end of his days. When he'd been younger, Davos had dreamed of making such voyages himself. But the years went dancing by like moths around a flame, and somehow the time had never been quite right."
"Death, there will be death, aye. Your lordship lost a son at the Red Wedding. I lost four upon the Blackwater. And why? Because the Lannisters stole the throne. Go to King’s Landing and look on Tommen with your own eyes, if you doubt me. A blind man could see it. What does Stannis offer you? Vengeance. Vengeance for my sons and yours, for your husbands and your fathers and your brothers. Vengeance for your murdered lord, your murdered king, your butchered princes. Vengeance!"
"Dreams can lie, your Grace."
"Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the other who would drag us all into the eternal light"
"And what lesson can we draw from Volantene history?”“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons."
"Man wants to be the king o’ the rabbits, he best wear a pair o’ floppy ears."
"Hard hands and no sense of humor makes for a bad marriage."
"A shy smile, strong arms, clever fingers, and two sure swords. What more could any woman want?"
"She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honour, for love."
"There is power in a King's blood."
"There was an agelessness about him, a stillness; on Roose Bolton's face, rage and joy looked much the same."
"Free folk don't follow names, or little cloth animals sewn on a tunic," the King-Beyond-the-Wall had told him. "They won't dance for coins, they don't care how your style yourself or what that chain of office means or who your grandsire was. They follow strength. They follow the man."
"Words are wind, and the wind from Manderly's mouth means no more than the wind escaping his bottom."
"Words are not swords."
"But words in a book were one thing. The true test came in battle."
"These woods are as empty as you think, he had said. You cannot know what the light might summon from the darkness."
"The gods are blind and men see only wha they wish."
"Beware men with cold hearts and blue lips."
"Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak."