A GAME OF THRONES - GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

A Game of Thrones - Pg 758

   "It was her fate, Khaleesi," said Aggo.
   If I look back I am lost. "It was a cruel fate," Dany said, "yet not so cruel as Mago's will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh."
   The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. "Khaleesi," the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, "Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back."
   She lifted her head. "And I am Daenerys Stormborn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the dragon's daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming."

A Game of Thrones - Pg 748

   The heads were mounted between the crenels, along the top of the wall, impaled on iron spikes so they faced out over the city. Sansa had noted them the moment she'd stepped out onto the wallwalk, but the river and the bustling streets and the setting sun were ever so much prettier. He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can't make me see them.
   "This one is your father," he said. "This one here. Dog, turn it around so she can see him."
   Sandor Clegane took the head by the hair and turned it. The severed head had been dipped in tar to preserve it longer. Sansa looked at it calmly, not seeing it at all. It did not really look like Lord Eddard, she thought; it did not even look real. "How long do I have to look?"
   Joffrey seemed disappointed. "Do you want to see the rest?" There was a long row of them.
   "If it please Your Grace."

A Game of Thrones - Pg 745

   "Did he instruct you to hit me if I refused to come?"
   "Are you refusing to come, my lady?" The look he gave her was without expression. He did not so much as glance at the bruise he had left her.
   He did not hate her, Sansa realized; niether did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all. She was only a... a thing to him.

A Game of Thrones - Pg 699

   A heartbeat, two, four, and suddenly it was as if she and her protectors were alone in the wood. The rest were melted away into the green.
   Yet when she looked across the valley to the far ridge, she saw the Greatjon's riders emerge from the darkness beneath the trees. They were in a long line, and endless line, and as they burst from the wood there was an instant, the smallest part of a heartbeat, when all Catelyn saw was the moonlight on the points of their lances, as if a thousand willowisps were coming down the ridge, wreathed in silver flame.
   Then she blinked, and they were only men, rushing down to kill or die.

A Game of Thrones - Pg 698

   Here was a hush in the night, moonlight and shadows, a thick carpet of dead leaves underfoot, densely wooded ridges sloping gently down to the streambed, the underbrush thinning as the ground fell away.
   Here was her son on his stallion, glancing back at her one last time and lifting his sword in salute.
   Here was the call of Maege Mormont's warhorn, a long low blast that rolled down the valley from the east, to tell them that the last of Jaime's riders had entered the trap.
   And Grey Wind threw back his head and howled.
   The sound seemed to go right through Catelyn Stark, and she found herself shivering. It was a terrible sound, a frightening sound, yet there was music in it too. For a second she felt something like pity for the Lannisters below. So this is what death sounds like, she thought.

A Game of Thrones - Pg 694

   "It will come when it comes," Catelyn told him. When it came, she knew it would mean death. Hal's death perhaps... or hers, or Robb's. No one was safe. No life was certain. Catelyn was content to wait, to listen to the whispers in the woods and the faint music of the brook, to feel the warm wind in her hair.

A Game of Thrones - Pg 674

   "Drink neither wine nor the milk of the poppy," she cautioned him. "Pain you will have, but you must keep your body strong to fight the poison spirits."
   "I am khal," Drogo said. "I spit on pain and drink what I like."

A Game of Thrones - Pg 662

   "What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms... or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy."

A Game of Thrones - Pg 642

   Did you teach him wisdom as well as valor, Ned? she wondered. Did you teach him how to kneel? The graveyards of the Seven Kingdoms were full of brave men who had never learned that lesson.

A Game of Thrones - Pg 630

   The king heard him. "You stiff-necked fool," he muttered, "too proud to listen. Can you eat pride, Stark? Will honor shield your children?" Cracks ran down his face, fissures opening in the flesh, and he reached up and ripped the mask away. It was not Robert at all; it was Littlefinger, grinning, mocking him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his lies turned to pale grey moths and took wing.

A Game of Thrones - Pg 613

   "No sword is strong until it's been tempered," Lord Tywin declared. "The Stark boy is a child. No doubt he likes the sound of warhorns well enough, and the sight of his banners fluttering in the wind, but in the end it comes down to butcher's work. I doubt he has the stomach for it."

A Game of Thrones - Pg 598

   The lords fell silent one by one, and Robb looked up at the sudden quiet and saw her. "Mother?" he said, his voice thick with emotion.
   Catelyn wanted to run to him, to kiss his sweet brow, to wrap him in her arms and hold him so tightly that he would never come to harm... but here in front of his lords, she dared not. He was playing a man's part now, and she would not take that away from him. So she held herself at the far end of the basalt slab they were using for a table... "You've grown a beard."

A Game of Thrones - Pg 572

   Hodor hated cold water, and would fight like a treed wildcat when threatened with soap, but he would happily immerse himself in the hottest pool and sit for hours, giving a loud burp to echo the spring whenever a bubble rose from the murky green depths to break upon the surface.

A Game of Thrones - Pg 524

  "My lord," he said, "King Robert is gone. The Gods give him rest."
   "No," Ned answered. "He hated rest. The gods give him love and laughter, and the joy of righteous battle."

A Game of Thrones - Pg 521

   Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end of the world; somehow that changed everything. Every shadow seemed darker, every sound more ominous. The trees pressed close and shut out the light of the setting sun. A thin crust of snow cracked beneath the hooves of their horses, with a sound like breaking bones. When the wind set the leaves to rustling, it was like a chilly finger tracing a path up Jon's spine. The Wall was at their backs, and only the gods knew what lay ahead.

A Game of Thrones - Pg 517

   "My lord." The voice made Jon glance back in surprise. Samwell Tarly was on his feet. The fat boy wiped his sweaty palms against his tunic. "Might I... might I go as well? To say my words at this heart tree?"
   "Does House Tarly keep the old gods too?" Mormont asked.
   "No my lord," Sam replied in a thin, nervous voice. The high officers frightened him, Jon knew, the Old Bear most of all. "I was named in the light of the Seven at the sept on Horn Hill, as my father was, and his father, and all the Tarlys for a thousand years."
   "Why would you forsake the gods of your father and your House?" wondered Ser Jaremy Rykker.
   "The Night's Watch is my House now," Sam said. "The Seven have never answered my prayers. Perhaps the old gods will."

A Game of Thrones - Pg 510

   Ned took out the king's last letter. A roll of crisp white parchment sealed with golden wax, a few short words and a smear of blood. How small the difference between victory and defeat, between life and death.

A Game of Thrones - Pg 508

   "Robert is not dead yet. The gods may spare him. If not, I shall convene the council to hear his final words and consider the matter of the succession, but I will not dishonor his last hours on earth by shedding blood in his halls and dragging frightened children from their beds."

A Game of Thrones - Pg 500

   The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk to smoldering... yet no drop of blood was spilled.
   He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.