From where I sit, battles are hard. I’ve written my share. Sometimes I employ the private’s viewpoint, very up close and personal, dropping the reader right into the middle of the carnage. That’s vivid and visceral, but of necessity chaotic, and it is easy to lose all sense of the battle as a whole. Sometimes I go with the general’s point of view instead, looking down from on high, seeing lines and flanks and reserves. That gives a great sense of the tactics, of how the battle is won or lost, but can easily slide into abstraction.

Men are men, vows are words, and words are wind.

I have an instinctual distrust of conventional happy endings.

Truly, sister, you were born to be a widow. (Tyrion to Cersei)

You wear your honor like a suit of armor... You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move.

Sorcery is the sauce fools spoon over failure to hide the flavor of their own incompetence.

You promised him vengeance as well.' 'I promised him justice.' 'Call it what you will. It still comes down to blood." - Tywin & Tyrion