A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

• The world preferred to forget that men who knew how to heal also knew how to kill.
• Gods make uncertain allies at best.
• What a man sows on his name day, he reaps throughout the year.
• A lady's armor is courtesy.
• Schemes are like fruit, they require a certain ripening.
• Even in the midst of war, certain decencies needed to be observed.
• Swearing don't make it true.
• There's no shame in fear, what matters is how we face it.
• Even the wisest man never knew whether his next harvest would be the last.
• Was there ever a war where only one side bled?
• Power resides where men believe it resides.
• He who hurries through life hurries to his grave.
• How can I lose something I have never owned?
• Hard places breed hard men, and hard men rule the world.
• Every morning brings a new day, much like the old.
• A man agrees with god as a raindrop with the storm.
• No man should live longer than his teeth.
• There are ghosts everywhere.  We carry them with us wherever we go.
• When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.
• The best lies contain within them nuggets of truth, enough to give a listener pause.
• The ones who look the most suspicious are likely innocent.  It's the ones who look innocent I need to beware.
• The gods made our bodies as well as our souls.  They give us voices, so we might worship them with song.  They give us hands, so we might build them temples.  And they give us desire, so we might mate and worship them in that way.
• When we speak of the morrow nothing is ever certain.
• I would sooner be up, though the world be dark, than lie restless abed, fretting on tasks undone.
• Nothing was simple and little was true.
• Searching is not finding.
• Is a secret still a secret if everyone knows it?
• Paint stripes on a toad, he does not become a tiger.
• One day she would allow herself to be less than strong.  But not today.  It could not be today.
• No one has ever died of restlessness, but rashness is another matter.
• In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining.
• Better to die free than live a slave.
• The wide world is full of people wanting to help.  Would that some could find the courage to help themselves.
• Only a fool humbles himself when the world is so full of men eager to do that job for him.
• Fools believe in foolish things.
• What boy does not secretly wish to find hidden powers in himself?
• So long as there was magic, anything could happen.
• If you step in a nest of snakes, does it matter which one bites you first?
• A man should never refuse to taste a peach.  He may never get the chance again.
• Sorcery is the sauce fools spoon over failure to hide the flavor of their own incompetence.
• A battle is not a war.
• It seems to me that it might be easier for one man to find two hundred than for two hundred to find one.
• No victory is without cost.
• Vows made at sword point are not valid.
• Have you ever considered that too many answers are the same as no answer at all?
• You served him valiantly, but when you seek to follow him into the earth, you serve no one.
• The longer you remain in one place, the easier it will be for your enemies to find you.
• A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good.  Each should have its own reward.
• Some men believe everything and some nothing.
• Some lights cast more than one shadow.
• It seems to me that most men are grey.
• If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion.  A man is good, or he is evil.
• The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome.
• The man who kills his own blood is cursed forever in the sight of gods and men.
• How can I do my duty if I do not know where it lies?
• Only cowards fight with fire.
• If you can't protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can.
• A woman's life is nine parts mess to one part magic...and the parts that look like magic often turn out to be messiest of all.
• In formal battle, discipline is more important than courage.
• Men fight more fiercely for a king who shares their peril than one who hides behind his mother's skirts.
• Will holding it secret in your heart make it any less true?  If you never tell, never speak of it, will it become only a dream, less than a dream, a nightmare half-remembered?
• Forbid her anything and it became her heart's desire.
• People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up.
• Sooner madness than defeat.  Defeat is death and shame.
• If I'm to sit here like a stump, I had as well paint a target on my breastplate.
• You don't feel your wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of the armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes.  You stop feeling, you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight, the foe, this man and then the next and the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you're not, you're alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing.
• Gentle Mother, font of mercy, save our sons from war, we pray, stay the swords and stay the arrows, let them know a better day.  Gentle Mother, strength of women, help our daughters through this fray, soothe the wrath and tame the fury, teach us all a kinder way.
• Wishing it were otherwise will not make it so.
• Terrible times breed terrible things.

1/8/2013