George R.R. Martin Quotes

Why has no one come to pry me out of here?- Cersei
George R.R. Martin
A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor.
George R.R. Martin
Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle.
George R.R. Martin
We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.
George R.R. Martin
No, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don't you see? Don't you SEE?
George R.R. Martin
Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.
George R.R. Martin
When the end comes, I will meet it raging.
George R.R. Martin
Yet the higher a man climbs the further he has to fall.
George R.R. Martin
Your brother Jaime keeps losing battles. He gave Sansa an angry look, as if it were her fault. He’s been taken by the Starks and we’ve lost Riverrun and now her stupid brother is calling himself a king.The dwarf smiled crookedly. “All sorts of people are calling themselves kings these days.
George R.R. Martin
The man is as useless as nipples on a breastplate.
George R.R. Martin
The comic book is not the book. the graphic novel is not the novel. The same, of course, is true of films and television. When we move a story from one medium to another, no matter how faithful we attempt to be, some changes are inevitable. Each medium has its own demands, own restrictions, its own way of telling a story.
George R.R. Martin
Power is a trick. It lies where we believe it lies.
George R.R. Martin
My uncle always said that it was the sword in a man's hand that determined his worth, not the one between his legs.
George R.R. Martin
A man can own a woman or a man can own a knife, but no man can own both.
George R.R. Martin
The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid.
George R.R. Martin
Lady Selyse was as tall as her husband, thin of body and thin of face, with prominent ears, a sharp nose, and the faintest hint of a mustache on her upper lip. She plucked it daily and cursed it regularly, yet it never failed to return. Her eyes were pale, her mouth stern, her voice a whip. She cracked it now.
George R.R. Martin
They laughed at him, but they didn't know, they didn't know about all the nice things he had. No one knew. No one. Only someday he'd see somebody different, somebody to give his things to, somebody who would give him all their things. Yes. He'd like that. He'd know her when he saw her. He'd know just what to say.
George R.R. Martin
Bad and worse and worst makes a beggar's choice.
George R.R. Martin
Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories.
George R.R. Martin
There are no heroes...in life, the monsters win.
George R.R. Martin
It is hard to die unmourned.
George R.R. Martin
All men must die. We are but death's instruments, not death himself.
George R.R. Martin
A man is never so vulnerable in a battle as when he flees," Lord Eddard has told Jon once. "A running man is like a wounded animal to a soldier. It gets his bloodlust up.
George R.R. Martin
The battle fever. He had never thought to experience it himself, though Jamie had told him of it often enough. How time seemed to blur and slow and evenstop, how the past and the future vanished until there was nothing but the instant, how fear fled, and thought fled, and even you body. "You don't feel your wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of the armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes. You stop feeling you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight , the foe, this man and then the next and the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you're not, you're alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing." Battle fever. I am half a man and drunk with slaughter, let them kill me if they can!
George R.R. Martin
Fighting is better than this waiting,” Brienne said. “You don’t feel so helpless when you fight. You have a sword and a horse, sometimes an axe. When you’re armored it’s hard for anyone to hurt you.”“Knights die in battle,” Catelyn reminded her.Brienne looked at her with those blue and beautiful eyes. “As ladies die in childbed. No one sings songs about them.
George R.R. Martin
Then Royce's parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. The young Lord cried out in pain. Blood welled between the rings. It seemed red as fire where they touched the snow.
George R.R. Martin
Never speak of defeat before battle.
George R.R. Martin
Disease could wipe out an army quicker than any battle.
George R.R. Martin
The looters comes with the carrion crows after every battle.
George R.R. Martin
No singer would ever make a song about that battle. No maester would ever write down an account for one of the Reader's beloved books. No banners flew, no warhorns moaned, no great lord called his men about him to hear his final ringing words. They fought in the predawn gloom, shadow against shadow, stumbling over roots and rocks, with mud and rotting leaves beneath their feet.
George R.R. Martin
Mine is the blood of the dragon.
George R.R. Martin
A bloody sword is a beautiful thing.
George R.R. Martin
All Knights must bleed. Blood is the seal of our devotion.
George R.R. Martin
Blood calls to blood.
George R.R. Martin
Brick and blood built Astapor, and brick and blood her people.
George R.R. Martin
Jon:'What are you doing up there? Why aren't you at the feast?'Tyrion: 'Too hot, too noisy, and I'd drunk too much wine', the dwarf told him. 'I learned long ago that it is considered rude to vomit on your brother.
George R.R. Martin
A man should smell of sweat, not flowers.
George R.R. Martin
In this world the weak are the victims of the strong.
George R.R. Martin
It's not," Mormont told him. "Gods save us, boy, you're not blind and you're not stupid. When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron Throne?
George R.R. Martin
Winter is coming, warned the Stark words, and truly it had come to them with a vengeance. But it is high summer for House Lannister. So why am I so bloody cold?
George R.R. Martin
Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it.
George R.R. Martin
Winter is coming.
George R.R. Martin
Nothing burns like the cold.
George R.R. Martin
Sometimes the storm winds blow so strong a man has no choice but to furl his sails.
George R.R. Martin
She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of the horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well.
George R.R. Martin
Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish.
George R.R. Martin
A small spoon of victory is just the thing to settle the stomach before battle, " Ser Imry had declared happily.
George R.R. Martin
Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish: The realm. Do you know what the realm is? It's the thousand blades of Aegon's enemies, a story we agree to tell each other over and over, until we forget that it's a lie.Lord Varys: But what do we have left, once we abandon the lie? Chaos? A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish: Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.
George R.R. Martin
What man wants does not matter.
George R.R. Martin
It is hard to look a hero when mounted on a pig.
George R.R. Martin
She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above.
George R.R. Martin
...his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking
George R.R. Martin
I am alive, and drunk on sunlight.
George R.R. Martin
There is sitting and there is sitting. (...) Each one waits for the other to move, but the lion is poised, his tail twitching, while the fawn is frozen by fear, bowels turned to belly. No matter which way he bounds, the lion will have him, and he knows it.
George R.R. Martin
One man on the wall is worth ten beneath it.
George R.R. Martin
Not that I'm complaining. It was better than my old dream, where Harma Dogshead was feeding me to her pigs.""Harma's dead." Jon said."But not the pigs. They look at me the way Slayer used to look at ham. Not to say that the wildlings mean us harm. Aye, we hacked their gods apart and made them burn the pieces, but we gave them onion soup. What's a god compared to a nice bowl of onion soup? I could do with mine myself.
George R.R. Martin
Why do the Gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?
George R.R. Martin
What sort of gods make rats and plagues and dwarfs?
George R.R. Martin
Arya did not dare [take a bath], even though she smelled as bad as Yoren by now, all sour and stinky. Some of the creatures living in her clothes had come all the way from Flea Bottom with her; it didn’t seem right to drown them.
George R.R. Martin
Jaime gave her [Brienne] a hard smile. "See, wench? We know each other too well.
George R.R. Martin