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

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.

No one who wears a crown is ever safe.

The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.

Gods and wonders always appear, to attend the birth of kings.

Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.

An awful lot of fantasy, and even some great fantasy, falls into the mistake of assuming that a good man will be a good king, that all that is necessary is to be a decent human being and when you're king everything will go swimmingly.