So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

Once you get to know your neighbors, you are no longer free, you are all tangled up, you have to stop and speak when you are out and you never feel safe when you are in.

The great and recurrent question about Abroad is, is it worth the trouble of getting there?

Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.

To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder.

The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts.

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals -- or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.

Only one hour in the normal day is more pleasurable than the hour spent in bed with a book before going to sleep, and that is the hour spent in bed with a book after being called in the morning.

I think writers, by nature, are more observers instead of participators.

McKenzie was Caroline's primary wingman. They had matching Coach bags to prove it.

You pick up a camera because something has been revealed to you in the landscape or in the human-scape. And you have no choice because it's a gift. And it's like, oh right, I better start doing this!

Coming into a game in the eighth or ninth inning is like parachuting behind enemy lines. And sometimes the chute doesn't open. You have to live with that. It's an occupational hazard.

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?

You and your heart shouldn't feel so far apart

Raise up your glasses against evil forces; Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses.

I don't want to be an editor - I want to be really forward about that. I would be a horrible editor.

Strip is the power. I'm ready to strip... I think everyone is. In that I'm saying I think everyone is ready to take off masks and pretentious costumes that don't represent who they truly are.

I believe in anything that works.