He never wanted love, though. You cannot eat love, nor buy a horse with it, nor warm your halls on a cold night.

Kind? How boring that would be. I aspire to be wicked.

We look at mountains and call them eternal, and they seem... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, starts fall from the sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.

Swords have been my life, not books. But every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness. Your father was not the first. King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.

Tears aren't a woman's only weapon.

A man who fights for coin is loyal only to his purse.

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.