One of the great things about books is you can afford to do anything.
George R. R. MartinRead
Valar Morghulis - All men must die.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the inevitability of death for all individuals.
Valar Morghulis, translated as 'All men must die', is a reminder of the universal truth that mortality is an inescapable aspect of human existence. It serves as a call to acknowledge our finite nature, prompting reflection on how we choose to live our lives in the face of this ultimate fate.
In practice
In a speech about life experiences, one might say 'As Valar Morghulis reminds us, we must cherish every moment because all men must die.'
One of the great things about books is you can afford to do anything.
I hate outlines. I have a broad sense of where the story is going; I know the end, I know the end of the principal characters, and I know the major turning points and events from the books, the climaxes for each book, but I don't necessarily know each twist and turn along the way. That's something I discover in the course of writing and that's what makes writing enjoyable. I think if I outlined comprehensively and stuck to the outline the actual writing would be boring.
There is only one god and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: βNot today.
I did not do it. Yet now I wish I had.β He turned to face the hall, that sea of pale faces. βI 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. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here.
But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. 'Life is not a song, sweetling,' he'd told her, 'You may learn that one day to your sorrow.' In life, the monsters win, she told herself.
I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.
Jealousy is the greatest of all evils, and the one that arouses the least pity in the person who causes it.
To provide employment for the poor, and support for the indigent, is among the primary, and, at the same time, not least difficult cares of the public authority.
Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.
That he who hath the loan of money has not repaid it, and he who has repaid has not the loan; but he who has acknowledged a kindness has it still, and he who has a feeling of it has requited it.
Like the practice of breath control, meditation on the forms of God, repetition of mantras, food restrictions, etc., are but aids for rendering the mind quiescent.
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
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