[Book] A Game of Thrones (2): Quotes (progress 47%)

[Book] A Game of Thrones (2): Quotes (progress 47%)

Title: A Game of Thrones

Author: George R R Martin

I watched the series up to somewhere around Season 6. Then I decided rather to read the book instead of watching it. Here are some book quotes at the point of progress of 47% of the first book. It will be a long way to go, and I am not sure I will even finish the whole series. 

Quotes

1.

  "So the slaver has become a spy," Ned said with distaste. He handed the letter back. "I would rather he become a corpse."

  "Varys tells me that spies are more useful than corpses," Robert said. "Jorah aside, what do you make of his report?"

  "Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Shall we send her a wedding gift?"

2. 

  This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. "Your Grace, the girl is scarcely more than a child. You are no Tywin Lannister, to slaughter innocents." It was said that Rhaegar's little girl had gried as they dragged her from beneath her bed to face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe in arms, yet Lord Tywin's soldiers had torn him from his mother's breast and dashed his head against a wall.

  "And how long will this one remain an innocent?" Robert's mouth grew hard. "This child will soon enough spread her legs and start breeding more dragonspawn to plague me."

3.

  "I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves."

4. 

  Robert snorted. The anger was leaving him as suddenly as it had come. "This Khal Drogo is said to have a hundred thousand men in his horde. What would Jon say to that?"

  "He would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat to the realm, so long as they remain on the other side of the narrow sea," Ned reply calmly. "The barbarians have no ships. They hate and fear the open sea."

5.

  Joffrey reflected a moment. "We could go riding."

  "Oh, I love riding," Sansa said.

6.

  "I won't hurt him ... much," Prince Joffrey told Arya, never taking his eyes off the butcher's boy.

7.

  His shirt was soaked in blood. Arya said, "She didn't hurt you ... much." She picked up Lion's Tooth where it had fallen, and stood over him, holding the sword with both hands.

8. 

  She blinked at her sister, then at the young prince. "I don't know,'" she said tearfully, looking as though she wanted to bolt. "I don't remember. Everything happened so fast, I didn't see ..."

  "You rotten!" Arya shrieked. She flew at her sister like an arrow, knocking Sansa down to the ground, pummeling her. "Liar, liar, liar, liar."

9. 

  "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" he heard his own voice saying, small and far away.

  And his father's voice replied to him. "That is the only time a man can be brave."

10. 

  "His name is Summer," he said.

11.

  He was still screaming. "You do not command the dragon. Do you understand? I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, I will not hear orders from some horselord's slut, do you hear me?" His hand went under her vest, his fingers digging painfully into her breast. "Do you hear me?"

12.

  Dany rode clse beside him. "Still," she said, "the common people are waiting for him. Magister Illyrio says they are sewing dragon banners and praying for Viserys to return from across the narrow sea to free them."

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

  Dany rode along quietly for a time, working his words like a puzzle box. 

13.

  "My brother will never take back the Seven Kingdoms," Dany said. She had known that for a long time, she realized. She had known it all her life. Only she had never let herself say the words, even in a whisper, but now she said them for Jorah Mormont and all the world to hear.

14.

  Robb Stark seemed puzzled. "Is this some trap, Lannister? What's Bran to you? Why should you want to help him?"

  "Your brother Jon asked it of me. And I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things." Tyrion Lannister placed a hand over his heart and grinned. 

15.

  "He was going to be a knight," Arya was saying now. "A knight of the Kingsguard. Can he still be a night?"

  "No," Ned said. He saw no use in lying to her. "Yet someday he may be the lord of a great holdfast and sit on the king's council. He might raise castles like Brandon the Builder, or sail a ship across the Sunset sea, or enter your mother's Faith and become the High Septon." But he will never run beside his wolf again, he thought with a sadness too deep for words, or lie with a woman, or hold his own son in his arm.

  Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?"

  "You," Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, "will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon."

  Arya screwed up her face. "No," she said, "that's Sansa." She folded up her right leg and resumed her balancing. Ned sighed and left her there.

16. 

  "Lord Petyr," Ned called after him. "I ... am grateful for your help. Perhaps I was wrong to distrust you."

  Littlefinger fingered his small pointed beard. "You are slow to learn, Lord Eddard. Distrusting me was the wisest thing you've done since you climbed down off your horse."

17.

  "A very bad man," Lysa told him as she covered herself, "but Mother won't let him harm my little baby."

  "Make him fly," Robert said eagerly.

  Lysa stroked her son's hair. "Perhaps we will," she murmured. "Perhaps that is just what we will do."

18.

  "Your business," he said lightly, "or Robert's? They say the Hand dreams the king's dreams, speaks with the king's voice, and rules with the king's sword. Does that also mean you fuck with the king's --"

  "Lord Baelish," Ned interrupted, "you presume too much. I am not ungrateful for your help. It might have taken us years to find this brothel without you. That does not mean I intend to endure your mockery. And I am no longer the King's Hand."

19.

  The girl had been so young Ned had not dared to ask her age. No doubt she'd been a virgin; the better brothels could always find a virgin, if the purse was fat enough. She had light red hair and a powdering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and when she slipped free a breast to give her nipple to the babe, he saw that her bosom was freckled as well. "I named her Barra," she said as the child nursed. "She looks so like him, does she not, milord? She has his nose, and his hair ..."

20. 

  Ser Jorah grunted. "Yes, Khaleesi, but ... the Dothraki look on these things differently than we do in the west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told him, but your brother does not listen. The horselords are no traders. Viserys thinks he sold you, and now he wants his price. Yet Khal Drogo would say he had you as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift in return, yes ... in his own time. You do not demand a gift, not of a khal. You do not demand anything of a khal."

21. 

  In some khalasars, Jhiqui said, the bloodriders shared the khal's wine, his tent, and even his wives, though never his horses. A man's mount was his own.

  Daenerys was glad that Khal Drogo did not hold to those ancient ways. She should not have liked being shared.

The first quotes are listed here: [Book] A Game of Thrones (1): Quotes (progress 14%)

20 Nov. 2017

gguro