George R.R. Martin

Armageddon,' Sandy said. 'The final battle. The ultimate confrontation between good and evil. That's what armageddon is supposed to be. Right?'Hobbins lifted a pale white eyebrow, said nothing.'Which side are we?' Sandy demanded. 'Which side are we?''That's one you got to work out yourself, friend. This ain't like in Tolkien, is it?

If you need help bark like a dog." - Gendry. "That's stupid. If I need help I'll shout help." - Arya

The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling. (Varys)

War seems like a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle. For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they__e been gutted by an axe. They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now, They take the wound, and when that__ still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron half helm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the small folk whose land they__e fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it__ just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don__ know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they__e fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad in all steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world.And the man breaks.

There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.

Perhaps I cannot make my people good, she told herself, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad.

You are your mother's trueborn son of Lannister.""Am I?" the dwarf replied, sardonic. "Do tell my lord father. My mother died birthing me, and he's never been sure.""I don't even know who my mother was," Jon said. "Some woman, no doubt. Most of them are." He favored Jon with a rueful grin. "Remember this, boy. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs."And with that he turned and sauntered back into the feast, whistling a tune. When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.

My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.

When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.A novel for me is an immersive experience where I feel as if I have lived it and that I've tasted the food and experienced the sex and experienced the terror of battle. So I want all of the detail, all of the sensory things__hether it's a good experience, or a bad experience, I want to put the reader through it. To that mind, detail is necessary, showing not telling is necessary, and nothing is gratuitous.

His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin.

Robb says the man died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid.""What do you think?" his father asked.Bran thought about it. "can a man still be brave if he's afraid?""That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him.

Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear?Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feetdeep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the longnight, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little childrenare born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt andhungry, and the white walkers move through the woods

Fear cuts deeper than swords.

There's no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it.

Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?''That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.

The man who fears losing has already lost.

A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.