“I swear to you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one.”

“When you play a game of thrones you win or you die.”

“When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

“It's not," Mormont told him. "Gods save us, boy, you're not blind and you're not stupid. When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron Throne?”

“And Winterfell … grey granite, oak and iron, crows wheeling around the towers, steam rising off the hot pools in the godswood, the stone kings sitting on their thrones … how could Winterfell be gone?”

“I swear it by earth and water,"said the boy in green."I swear it by bronze and iron," his sister said."We swear it by ice and fire," they finished it together.Bran groped for words. Was he supposed to swear something back to them.--"May your winters be short and your summers bountiful,"he said.”

“The stone is strong. Bran told himself, the roots of the trees go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I'm not dead either.”