Favorite Quotes from Game of Thrones: The Book

Tyrion

“Let me give you some counsel, bastard,” Lannister said. “Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

“Don’t call me Lord Snow.” The dwarf lifted and eyebrow. “Would you rather be called the Imp? Let them see that their words can cut you, and you’ll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can’t hurt you with it anymore.”

“Why would Petyr lie to me?”
“Why does a bear shit in the woods?” he demanded “Because it is his nature.”

Syrio

“Just so. Opening your eyes is all that is needing. The heart lies and the head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterwards, in that way knowing the truth.”

Varys

“When I was a young boy, before I was cut, I travaled with a troupe of mummers through the Free Cities. They taught me that each man has a role to play, in life as well as mummery. So it is at court. The King’s Justice must be fearsome, the master of coin must be frugal, the Lord Commander of the Knightsguard must be valiant… and the master of whisperers must be sly and obsequious and without scruple. A courageous informer would be as useless as a cowardly knight.”

“It was not wine that killed the king. It was your mercy.”

“The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that’s true, Lord Eddard, tell me… why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?”

Maester Aemon

“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk to path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”

Daenerys

She told herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the maegi had learned in Asshai. The night was black and moonless, but overhead a million stars burned bright. She took that for an omen… And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew that he was truly lost to her. “When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” she said sadly. “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When my womb quickens again, and I bear a living child. Then you will return, my sun-and-stars, and not before.”… She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his face.

Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind him…”Blood of my blood,” he murmured… And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki… As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.