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.

What's dead may never die.

"You look different now. Like a proper little girl," (said Gendry.) "I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns," (said Arya.) "Nice, though. A nice oak tree. [...] You even smell nice for a change."

I need to sleep, but fear to dream.

No fight is hopeless till it has been fought.

She yearned to see her mother again, and Robb and Bran and Rickon… but it was Jon Snow she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her “little sister.” She’d tell him, “I missed you,” and he’d say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything.

The vast majority of writers out there, they finish their books and no one cares whether their book is late or ever comes out at all. And then it comes out and two reviews are published and it sells 12 copies.