Life is very full of sex, or should be. As much as I admire Tolkien - and I do, he was a giant of fantasy and a giant of literature, and I think he wrote a great book that will be read for many years - you do have to wonder where all those Hobbits came from, since you can't imagine Hobbits having sex, can you? Well, sex is an important part of who we are. It drives us, it motivates us, it makes us do sometimes very noble things and it makes us do sometimes incredibly stupid things. Leave it out, and you've got an incomplete world.

You should grieve if a fictional character is killed. You should care.

The maester smiled...Hush now, child, I'm much older than you. I can....die as I please.

A man could not always be where he belonged, though.

The world is full of cravens who pretended to be heroes.

The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer.

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