—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Do I really want to spend the rest of my life eating salt beef and porridge with murderers and thieves?
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Someone should tell the cooks that turnip isn’t a meat.
* * *
—A Game of Thrones
* * *
If I drink enough fire wine
perhaps I’ll dream of dragons.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
On Kingship
* * *
All sorts of people are calling themselves kings these days.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
My nephew is not fit to sit a privy, let alone the Iron Throne.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
Crowns do queer things to the heads beneath them.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
Kings are falling like leaves this autumn.
* * *
—A Storm of Swords
On Realpolitik
* * *
Some allies are more dangerous than enemies.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
You can buy a man with gold, but only blood and steel will keep him true.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Schemes are like fruit, they require a certain ripening.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
It all goes back and back, to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.
* * *
—A Storm of Swords
* * *
Rebellion makes for queer bedfellows.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
When winter comes, the realm will starve.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
The Art of War
* * *
Gold has its uses, but wars are won with iron.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
I sit a chair better than a horse, and I’d sooner hold a wine goblet than a battle-axe. All that about the thunder of the drums, sunlight flashing on armor, magnificent destriers snorting and prancing? Well, the drums gave me headaches, the sunlight flashing on my armor cooked me up like a harvest day goose, and those magnificent destriers shit everywhere.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
How many Dornishmen does it take to start a war? Only one.
* * *
—A Storm of Swords
* * *
Knights know only one way to solve a problem. They couch their lances and charge. A dwarf has a different way of looking at the world.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
He’s going to be as useful as nipples on a breastplate.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
If a man paints a target on his chest, he should expect that sooner or later someone will loose an arrow at him.
* * *
—A Game of Thrones
* * *
A sword through the bowels.
A sure cure for constipation.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Men fight more fiercely for a king who shares their peril than one who hides behind his mother’s skirts.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
That was the way of war. The smallfolk were slaughtered, while highborn were held for ransom. Remind me to thank the gods that I was born a Lannister.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
The Art of Saving Your Skin
* * *
Courage and folly are cousins, or so I’ve heard.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
I’m terrified of my enemies, so I kill them all.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
All this mistrust will sour your stomach and keep you awake at night, ’tis true, but better that than the long sleep that does not end.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
I decline to deliver any message that might get me killed.
* * *
—A Game of Thrones
* * *
Riding hard and fast by night is a sure way to tumble down a mountain and crack your skull.
* * *
—A Game of Thrones
The Art of Lying
* * *
Give me sweet lies, and keep your bitter truths.
* * *
—A Storm of Swords
* * *
How did I lose my nose? I shoved it up your wife’s cunt and she bit it off.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Half-truths are worth more than outright lies.
* * *
—A Storm of Swords
* * *
My father threw me down a well the day I was born, but I was so ugly that the water witch who lived down there spat me back.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
The best lies are seasoned with a bit of truth.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
My mother loved me best of all her children because I was so small. She nursed me at her breast till I was seven. That made my brothers jealous, so they stuffed me in a sack and sold me to a mummer’s troupe. When I tried to run off the master mummer cut off half my nose, so I had no choice but to go with them and learn to be amusing.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
The sow I ride is actually my sister. We have the same nose, could you tell? A wizard cast a spell on her, but if you give her a big wet kiss, she’ll turn into a beautiful woman. The pity is, once you get to know her, you’ll want to kiss her again to turn her back.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Every touch a lie. I have paid her so much false coin that she half thinks she’s rich.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
You’d be astonished at what a boy can make of a few lies, fifty pieces of silver, and a drunken septon.
* * *
—A Game of Thrones
On Dragons and Other Myths
* * *
I believe in steel swords, gold coins, and men’s wits. And I believe there once were dragons.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
What if we should find that this talk of dragons was just some sailor’s drunken fancy? This wide world is full of such mad tales. Grumkins and snarks, ghosts and ghouls, mermaids, rock goblins, winged horses, winged pigs, winged lions.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Next you will be offering me a suit of magic armor and a palace in Valyria.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can look down over the world when he’s seated on a dragon’s back.
* * *
—A Game of Thrones
* * *
Once a man has seen a dragon in flight, let him stay home and tend his garden in content, for this wide world has no greater wonder.
* * *
—A Dance
with Dragons
* * *
If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
The Shrouded Lord is just a legend, no more real than the ghost of Lann the Clever that some claim haunts Casterley Rock.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Trust no one. And keep your dragon close.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
On Religion
* * *
What sort of gods make rats and plagues and dwarfs?
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
When I was a boy, my wet nurse told me that one day, if men were good, the gods would give the world a summer without ending.
* * *
—A Game of Thrones
* * *
Light our fire and protect us from the dark, blah blah, light our way and keep us toasty warm, the night is dark and full of terrors, save us from the scary things, and blah blah blah some more.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
Somewhere some god is laughing.
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
If there are gods to listen, they are monstrous gods, who torment us for their sport. Who else would make a world like this, so full of bondage, blood, and pain?
* * *
—A Dance with Dragons
* * *
The gods give with one hand and take with the other.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
* * *
If I could pray with my cock, I would be much more religious.
* * *
—A Clash of Kings
BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A Song of Ice and Fire
Book One: A Game of Thrones
Book Two: A Clash of Kings
Book Three: A Storm of Swords
Book Four: A Feast for Crows
Book Five: A Dance with Dragons
Dying of the Light
Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle)
Fevre Dream
The Armageddon Rag
Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller)
Short Story Collections
Dreamsongs: Volume I
Dreamsongs: Volume II
A Song for Lya and Other Stories
Songs of Stars and Shadows
Sandkings
Songs the Dead Men Sing
Nightflyers
Tuf Voyaging
Portraits of His Children
Quartet
Edited by George R. R. Martin
New Voices in Science Fiction, Volumes 1–4
The Science Fiction Weight Loss Book (with Isaac Asimov and Martin Harry Greenberg)
The John W. Campbell Awards, Volume 5
Night Visions 3
Wild Cards I–XXI
Old Mars (with Gardner Dozois)
About the author
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the acclaimed series A Song of Ice and Fire—A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons. As a writer-producer, he has worked on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and pilots that were never made. He lives with the lovely Parris in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
www.georgerrmartin.com
George R. R. Martin, The Wit & Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister
(Series: # )
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