Now I understand why King Stannis let the wildlings through the Wall. He means for us to eat them.

Sometimes I think everyone is just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending is how you get brave, I don't know.

Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side?

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

Pyp had stabbed a turnip with his knife. "The night is dark and full of turnips," he announced in a solemn voice. "Let us all pray for venison, my children, with some onions and a bit of tasty gravy.

I bet this is a brothel," she whispered to Gendry. "You don't even know what a brothel is." "I do so," she insisted. "It's like an inn, with girls.

I've always taken that as my guiding principle and the rest is just set dressing. You can have dragons in it, or aliens and starships, or a western about a gunslinger, or even literary fiction, and ultimately you're still writing about the human heart in conflict with itself.