Sometimes there is no happy choice, Sam, only one less grievous than the others. - Jon Snow

Robb: Uncle Benjen said to send you to the stables if I saw you. Jon: I have one more farewell to make. Robb: Then I haven't seen you.

I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps.

Faith is like porridge. Better with milk and honey.

Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is STARK.

All men lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one great lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it... though some small part of them will always know that it is still a lie, and that will show upon their faces. (a servant in the House of Black and White)

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.