The common people pray for rain, healthy children and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.

I buried him with mine own hands, in a place he showed me once when I was a squire at Storm’s End. No one shall ever find him there to disturb his rest.” He looked at Jaime defiantly. “I will defend King Tommen with all my strength, I swear it. I will give my life for his if need be. But I will never betray Renly, by word or deed. He was the king that should have been. He was the best of them.

A true man does what he will, not what he must.

That man said he’d take your head too.” “Well, as to that,” Yoren said, “if he can get it off my shoulders, he’s welcome to it.

Only a fool humbles himself when the world is so full of men eager to do that job for him. (Theon Greyjoy)

There are a number of things that I'm trying to get into the books. There's a meta-fictional aspect, if I may use that pretentious word, to writing anything. You're writing in the shadow of all the people that have gone before and, in a way, you're having a dialogue with them. As someone who's read J.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard and all the great fantasists before, this is almost my answer to them.

Courage and folly are cousins, or so I’ve heard.