Alex Tsay > Alex's Quotes

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile. He used to mess my hair and call me "little sister," she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“A lord must learn that sometimes words can accomplish what swords cannot.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“I crossed a thousand leagues to come to you, and lost the best part of me along the way. Don't tell me to leave.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“When you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“Oh, I think not,” Varys said, swirling the wine in his cup. “Power is a curious thing, my lord. Perchance you have considered the riddle I posed you that day in the inn?”
“It has crossed my mind a time or two,” Tyrion admitted. “The king, the priest, the rich man—who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It’s a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. All depends on the man with the sword.”
“And yet he is no one,” Varys said. “He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel.”
“That piece of steel is the power of life and death.”
“Just so… yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, why do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?”
“Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords.”
“Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they?” Varys smiled. “Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods. Others say it derives from law. Yet that day on the steps of Baelor’s Sept, our godly High Septon and the lawful Queen Regent and your ever-so-knowledgeable servant were as powerless as any cobbler or cooper in the crowd. Who truly killed Eddard Stark, do you think? Joffrey, who gave the command? Ser Ilyn Payne, who swung the sword? Or… another?”
Tyrion cocked his head sideways. “Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?”
Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”
“So power is a mummer’s trick?”
“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”
Tyrion smiled. “Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I’d feel sad about it.”
“I will take that as high praise.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“It all goes back and back," Tyrion thought, "to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“Hodor!”
― George R.R. Martin

“Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”
― George R.R. Martin, Ace in the Hole

“I don't want to have a dozen sons," she had told him, appalled. "I want to have adventures" ~Asha Greyjoy”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love.”
― George R.R. Martin, Dreamsongs Section 5: Hybrids and Horrors

“Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find an edge to cut you.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“When they killed him, Mother wouldn't hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I've learned to appreciate thorns since. The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who've fought the Hundred War have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“There is something brittle in me that will break before it bends. Perhaps if the [the enemy] had brought a smaller army I might have had the sense to run. But he overdid it.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“No offense, but I'd rather kiss the horse.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Point Blank

“A German philosopher once wrote that he who fights monsters must take care that he doesn't become one himself.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Scorpia Rising

“Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.”
― Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“It's a small world. It keeps recrossing itself.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Anticipating the end of the world is humanity's oldest pastime”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Writing is such a damn lonely sickness.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas