“It had been more of a wish, actually, but it sounded better to call it a dream.”

“Bad dreams never come true. The both of them had been so young, that had sounded almost wise.”

“One voyage to the East and a man could live as rich as a lord until the end of his days. When he'd been younger, Davos had dreamed of making such voyages himself. But the years went dancing by like moths around a flame, and somehow the time had never been quite right.”

“All men must sleep, Bran. Even princes.”“When I sleep I turn into a wolf.” Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. “Do wolves dream?”“All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do.”“Do dead men dream?” Bran asked, thinking of his father. In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father’s likeness in granite.“Some say yes, some no,” the maester answered. “The dead themselves are silent on the matter.”“Do trees dream?”“Trees? No . . .”“They do,” Bran said with sudden certainty. “They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood.”Maester Luwin tugged at his chain where it chafed his neck. “If you would only spend more time with the other children—”“I hate the other children,” Bran said, meaning the Walders. “I commanded you to send them away.”

“Tyrion Lannister could not have been more astonished if Aegon the Conqueror himself had burst into the room, riding on a dragon and juggling lemon pies.”

“I have been despised by better men than you.”

“Nothing but this: I did not do it. Yet now I wish I had... I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is.”