Schemes are like fruit, they require a certain ripening.

Tyrion Lannister could not have been more astonished if Aegon the Conqueror himself had burst into the room, riding on a dragon and juggling lemon pies.

Jon Snow: I'm not afraid to die. Mormont: Nor life, I hope.

If I took it away, no doubt I'd find a morningstar hidden under your pillow within a fortnight. Try not to stab your sister, whatever the provocation.

Tyrion let the eunuch help him mount. "Lord Varys," he said from the saddle, "sometimes I feel as though you are the best friend I have in King's Landing and sometimes I feel you are my worst enemy." "How odd. I think quite the same of you.

A bruise is a lesson... and each lesson makes us better.

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.