“A census taker once tried to test me. I let my front garden eat him.”

“A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.”

“And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.”

“Thus the great civilizer sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World which the census-taker visits, and summons the savage there to surrender.”

“Once a man has seen a dragon in flight, let him stay home and tend his garden in content, someone had written once, for this wide world has no greater wonder." Tyrion scratched at his scar and tried to recall the author's name.”

“The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country turns out.”