AGOT re-read Part IV

[birdandherhound]

Eddard IV

• What was it that Jon had said when they found the pups in the snow Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord And he had killed Sansa's, and for what? Was it guilt that he was feeling? Or fear? If the gods had sent those wolves, what folly had he done?
• He could still hear Sansa's pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once.
• "You would be the last man I would willingly include in any party, Lord Baelish."
• "Would the lord and lady like the use of a bedchamber?" asked Littlefinger. "I should warn you, Stark, we usually charge for that sort of thing around here."
• Petyr Baelish smiled. "I am desperately sentimental, sweet lady. Best not tell anyone. I have spent years convincing the court that I am wicked and cruel, and I should hate to see all that hard work go for naught."
• "When I know the truth, I must go to Robert." And pray that the is the man I think he is he finished silently and not the man I fear he has become.

Tyrion III

• "Oh, I think that Lord Tyrion is quite a large man." Maester Aemon said from the far end of the table. He spoke softly, yet the high officers of the Night's Watch all fell quiet, the better to hear what the ancient had to say. "I think he is a giant come among us, here at the end of the world."
• Jon Snow: "Thank you, my lord of Lannister." He pulled off his glove and offered his bare hand. "Friend." Tyrion found himself oddly touched. "Most of my kin are bastards, he said with a wry smile, "but you're the first I've had to friend."

Arya II

• She wanted to tease Bran and play with baby Rickon and have Robb smile at her. She wanted Jon to muss up her hair and call her "little sister" and finish her sentences with her. But all of them were gone. She had no one left but Sansa, and Sansa wouldn't even talk to her unless Father made her.
• Eddard Stark: "The septa is doing no more than her duty, though gods know you have made it a struggle for the poor woman. Your mother and I have charged her with the impossible task of making you a lady."
• Eddard Stark: "You have a wildness in you, child. 'The wolf blood' my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave." Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. "Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her."
• Eddard Stark: "Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both of your hearts. You need her, as she needs you... and I need both of you, gods help me." He sounded so tired that it made Arya sad. "I don't hate Sansa," she told him. "Not truly."
• "I'm a girl," Arya objected. "Boy, girl," Syrio Forel said. "You are a sword, that is all."

Daenerys III

• Ser Jorah was not a handsome man. He had a neck and shoulders like a bull, and coarse black hair covered his arms and chest so thickly that there was none left for his head. Yet his smiles gave Dany comfort. "You are learning to talk like a queen, Daenerys." "Not a queen," said Dany. "A khaleesi."
• The Dothraki were a hard and unsentimental people, and it was not their custom to name their animals, so Dany thought of her only as the silver. She had never loved anything so much.
• She still ached after a long day's riding, yet somehow the pain had a sweetness to it now, and each morning she came willingly to her saddle, eager to know what wonders waited for her in the lands ahead. She began to find pleasure even in her nights, and if she still cried out when Drogo took her, it was not always in pain.
• He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been.
• Ser Jorah snorted. "Can you wake the dead, girl? Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, and he died on the trident. Viserys is less than the shadow of a snake."
• "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."
• "What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?" she asked him. "Home," he said. His voice was thick with longing. "I pray for home too," she told him, believing it.
• Doreah: "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return.

Bran IV

• Shaggydog ran at his heels, spinning and snapping if the other wolves came too close. His fur had darkened until he was all black, and his eyes were green fire. Bran's Summer came last. He was silver and smoke, with eyes of yellow gold that saw all there was to see.
• Old Nan: "My stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The storie are before me and after me, before you too."
• Old Nan: "Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods."
• Old Nan: "There came a night that lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their tears freeze on their cheeks."
• Tyrion Lannister: "So it is true, the boy lives. I could scarce believe it. You Starks are hard to kill."
• Tyrion Lannister: "Your brother Jon asked it of me. And I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things."
• "An adventure," Bran repeated wistfully. He heard his brother sob. The room was so dark he could not see the tears on Robb's face, so he reached out and found his hand.

Eddard V

• Maester Pycelle: "The Lord Varys was born a slave in Lys, did you know? Put not your trust in spiders, my lord."
• Pycelle bowed his head. "Come to me as often as you like, Lord Eddard. I am here to serve." Yes Ned thought as the door swung shut but whom?
• "I dreamed of Bran," Sansa had whispered to him. "I saw him smiling."
• "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' Sansa."
• 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.

Jon IV

• Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it the dwarf had told him, grinning. The world was full of cravens who pretended to be heroes; it took a queer sort of courage to admit to cowardice as Samwell Tarly had.
• It was Ghost who knew what to do. Silent as shadow, the pale direwolf moved closer and began to lick the warm tears off Samwell Tarly's face.
• "The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place."
• His passions were books and kittens and dancing, clumsy as he was. But he grew ill at the sight of blood, and wept to see even a chicken slaughtered.
• Randyll Tarly: "Nothing would please me more than to hunt you down like the pig you are." His arms were red to the elbow as he laid the skinning knife aside. "So. there is your choice. The Night's Watch" - he reached inside the deer, ripped out its heart, and held it in his fist, red and dripping - "or this."

Eddard VI

• Renly Baratheon: "If you cannot keep the king's peace, Janos, perhaps the City Watch should be commanded by someone who can."
• Renly Baratheon: "I ofttimes wonder how Stannis got that ugly daughter of his. He goes to his marriage bed like a man marching to a battlefield, with a grim look in his eyes and a determination to do his duty."
• (of Jon Arryn): The lord had taken a great interest in the breeding of hunting hounds, the lord had visited a master armorer to commission a new suit of plate.
• Stannis was a different sort of man, a bare year younger than the king, yet utterly unlike him, stern, humorless, unforgiving  grim in his sense of duty.
• The boy looked at Ned through sullen blue eyes and pushed back sweat-soaked hair with his fingers. Thick hair, shaggy and unkempt and black as ink.

Catelyn IV

• She remembered making mud pies with Lysa, the weight of them, the mud slick and brown between her fingers. They had served them to Littlefinger, giggling, and he'd eaten so much mud he was sick for a week.
• Lord Frey had arrived with his levies well after the battle was over, leaving some doubt as to which army he had planned to join (theirs, he had assured the victors solemnly in the aftermath, but ever after her father had called him the Late Lord Frey).
• Singers loved nothing half so well as the sound of their own voices.
• "My name is Marillion," the singer said, plucking a string on his woodharp.
• And may he choke on it Catelyn thought, but it was Bran she saw choking, drowning on his own blood.

Sansa II

• "It is better than the songs," she whispered when they found the places that her father had promised her, among the high lords and ladies. Sansa was dressed beautifully that day, in a green gown that brought out the auburn of her hair, and she knew they were looking at her and smiling.
• The girls giggled over the warrior priest Thoros of Myr, with his flapping red robes and shaven head, until the septa told them that he had once scaled the walls of Pyke with a flaming sword in hand.
• Jeyne Poole confessed herself frightened by the look of Jalabhar Xho, an exile prince from the Summer Isles who wore a cape of green and scarlet feathers over skin as dark as night, but when she saw young Lord Beric Dondarrion, with his hair like red gold and his black shield slashed by lightning, she pronounced herself willing to marry him on the instant.
• Jeyne Poole wept so hysterically that Septa Mordane finally took her off to regain her composure, but Sansa sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching with a strange fascination. She had never seen a man die before. She ought to be crying too, she thought, but the tears would not come.
• Ser Balon Swann also fell to Gregor, and Lord Renly to the Hound. Renly was unhorsed so violently that he seemed to fly backward off his charger, legs in the air.
• One of the tines had snapped off beneath him. When Lord Renly climbed to his feet, the commons cheered wildly, for King Robert's handsome young brother was a great favorite. He handed the broken tine to his conqueror with a gracious bow. The Hound snorted and tossed the broken antler into the crowd, where the commons began to punch and claw over the little bit of gold, until Lord Renly walked out among them and restored the peace. By then Septa Mordane returned, alone. Jeyne had been feeling ill, she explained; she had helped her back to the castle. Sansa had almost forgotten about Jeyne.
• He had grey-green eyes that did not smile when his mouth did.
• She was drunk on the magic of the night, giddy with glamour, swept away by beauties she had dreamt of all her life and never dared hope to know.
• Sandor Clegane: "The septons preach about the seven hells. What do they know? Only a man who's been burned knows what hell is truly like."
• She was sad for him, she realized. Somehow, the fear had gone away.
• She found his massive shoulder with her hand. "He was no true knight," she whispered to him.

Oh the Sansan!!!