George R.R. Martin

I sailed up to the cold stars but they were cold no longer, and I grew bigger and bigger until I was the stars and they were me, and I was Union, and for a single solitary glittering instant I was the universe.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.

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.

I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind_ and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. That__ why I read so much, Jon Snow.

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.

I have lived a thousand lives and I__e loved a thousand loves. I__e walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.

We'll never find that one, and I'll be blamed," announced Edd Tollett, the dour grey-haired squire everyone called Dolorous Edd. "Nothing ever goes missing that they don't look at me, ever since that time I lost my horse. As if that could be helped. He was white and it was snowing, what did they expected

Shaga: How would you like to die, little man?Tyrion: In my bed, at the age of eighty with a belly full of wine and a woman's mouth around my cock.

The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.

We were talking about the prince,' Sansa said, her voice soft as a kiss.Arya knew which prince she meant: Joffrey, of course. The tall, handsome one. Sansa got to sit with him at the feast. Arya had to sit with the little fat one. Naturally.

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.

Be careful you don't cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with.''Girls don't shave', Arya said.'Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa's legs?

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.

We all need to be mocked from time to time, lest we take ourselves too seriously.

They hate you because you act like you're better than they are...." "[they are] Four that you humiliated in the yard. Four who are probably afraid of you. I__e watched you fight. It__ not training with you. Put a good edge on your sword, and they__ be dead meat; you know it, I know it, they know it. You leave them nothing. You shame them. Does that make you proud?

Men's lives have meaning, not their deaths.

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 serve, and it is a sharp to remind us that knowledge can be dangerous.

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