"Brienne’s story is an adaptation of a traditionally male narrative, one that usually sidelines or victimises female characters. She swears fealty to a woman, as male knights swear to their liege lord, because she respects that woman’s strength, her bravery and her kindness. She goes on a quest to save the beautiful maiden, but not to marry her or benefit from the quest in any way, but to return her to her mother. Because she cares for Catelyn, and because it is the right thing to do. It is a story of a woman, rescuing a woman, for the sake of another woman. It is a rare story where the mother, the young girl and the shieldmaiden are all given equal weight and worth. Brienne, despite taking on many stereotypically male traits, is not “one of the boys” or in any way dismissive of her gender as a group. She does not fit into the role that society has assigned for her, but she does not disparage those who do. She uses her strength and her skill to respect and help other women in ways that most men in Westeros would never even think to attempt, because she understands, more than any other knight, that women are truly worth something as individuals."

"He is luring you in to make you easy prey. The more likable he is, the more deadly he is."

"You don’t know what goes on in anyone’s life but your own. And when you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re not messing with just that part. Unfortunately, you can’t be that precise and selective. When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life. Everything affects everything."

"Don’t ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that’s what they’re there for. Use your library). Don’t apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend’s copy. What’s important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read …"

"I realized that I was holding on to something that didn’t exist anymore. That the person I missed didn’t exist anymore. People change."

"

HAVING A COKE WITH YOU

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

"

"It’s got to suck, you know? Keeping something like that in, walking around everyday having so much you want to say but not doing it. It’s gotta make you really mad. Right?"

"Happy is the heart that still feels pain
Darkness drains and light will come again.."

"There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live. The sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope"