Perhaps that is the secret. It is not what we do, so much as why we do it.

I have a hole where my heart should be, she thought, and nowhere else to go.

That man said he’d take your head too.” “Well, as to that,” Yoren said, “if he can get it off my shoulders, he’s welcome to it.

The gods made our bodies as well as our souls, is it not so? They give us voices, so we might worship them with song. They give us hands, so we might build them temples. And they give us desire, so we might mate and worship them in that way.

A man of the Night's Watch lives his life for the realm. Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the honor of this house or that house, neither for gold nor glory nor a woman's love, but for the realm, and all the people in it. A man of the Night's Watch takes no wife and fathers no sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor. And you are the only sons we shall ever know.

There has never been a slave who did not choose to be a slave. Their choice may be between bondage and death, but the choice is always there.

Tell Robb that I'm going to command the Night's Watch and keep him safe, so he might as well take up needlework with the girls and have Mikken melt down his sword for horseshoes. - Jon Snow