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“Wars fought over a face like this,�� he murmured like he was talking to himself, my heart stopped beating and his thumbs moved lightly across my cheeks. “A man would work himself into the ground for it, go down to his knees to beg to keep it, endure torture to protect it, take a bullet for it,�� his eyes came to mine, “poison his brother to possess a face like this.”
― Kristen Ashley, Knight

“How can you still count yourself a knight, when you have forsaken every vow you ever swore?"

Jaime reached for the flagon to refill his cup. "So many vows...they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“War seems like a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle.

For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe.

They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now, They take the wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.

If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron half helm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the small folk whose land they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad in all steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world.

And the man breaks.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“And I wake up happy, baby, because I possess beauty and I own that beauty in all the forms it can take and the least important of those are physical.”
― Kristen Ashley, Knight

“Ash," I murmured, which made him flinch, bracing himself. My heart pounded, but I ignored my doubts and hurried on. "I...will..." Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and whispered, "Will you be my knight?”
― Julie Kagawa, The Iron Queen

“Our cousin Patrick Hacker McKaybees, died fighting by the side of the king.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Steel Blood

“Satan’s breath be damned, the nasty beast is still in there.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Steel Blood

“Wine makes all things possible.”
― George R.R. Martin, The Mystery Knight

“Her lips silently formed three words, oh my love.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Steel Blood

“My task is set before me, girl
My mission clear and true
There’ll be black knights and dragons, girl
But I will always come for you��”
― Emme Rollins

“There can be as many wrong reasons to do the right thing as there are stars in the sky. There might even be more than one legitimate right reason. But there is never a right reason to do the wrong thing. Not ever.”
― Donita K. Paul, DragonKnight

“Can I dwell on what I scarce remember? I held a castle on the Marches once, and there was a woman I was pledged to marry, but I could not find that castle today, nor tell you the color of that woman's hair. Who knighted me, old friend? What were my favorite foods? It all fades. Sometimes I think I was born on the bloody grass in that grove of ash, with the taste of fire in my mouth and a hole in my chest. Are you my mother, Thoros?”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“Toasted almond pancakes. Sweet soft 'okays'. Makin' me laugh more in a few weeks than I have in decades. 'Yes, Daddys' I feel in my dick. The first voicemail you left me, babe. I saved it and I listen to it once a day. If I lose focus, I see you on your back, knees high, legs wide, offering your sweet, wet pussy to me. You smile at me in bed every time you wander outta my bedroom in my shirts, my tees, or your work clothes and honest to Christ, it sets me up for the day. And no matter what shit goes down, I get through it knowin' whichever bed I climb into at night, you're in it ready to snuggle into me or give me what I wanna take. Your girl, a headache. You, never. And in a life that's been full of headaches, babe, having that, there is no price tag. You gotta get it and do it fuckin' now that there's a lotta different kinds of give and take. And you give as good as you get, baby, trust me.”
― Kristen Ashley, Knight

“The Castle. He’d seen this expression far too many times during their marriage. The Castle was Bryony drawing up the gates and retreating deep into the inner keep. And he’d always hated it. Marriage meant that you shared your goddamn castle. You didn’t leave your poor knight of a husband circling the walls trying to find a way in.”
― Sherry Thomas, Not Quite a Husband

“How did they know that I was the one who saved them?"
"They don't. You're the third knight they've celebrated over since it happened.”
― Gerald Morris, The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady

“The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. The man who combines both characters �� the knight �� is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.”
― C.S. Lewis

“In the mirror, he saw himself, a knight with bowed head, offering his service, a sword in his hand, a sword in his back. He felt no pain, only the ache in his heart. Choose me. There were tears on his cheeks, even as he felt the shame of it. She was no one, a girl who had lucked into a gift, who had done nothing to earn it. She was his queen.
"Darlington," she said. But that was not his true name any more than Alex was hers.
If only she would choose him. If only she would let him...
She touched her fingers to his face, lifted his chin. Her lips brushed his ear. He didn't understand it. He only wanted her to do it again. Stars poured through him, a cold and billowing wave of night. He saw everything. He saw their bodies entwined. She was above him and beneath him all at once, her body splayed and white as a lotus flower.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“Behind her gentle character, the strength of armor was found.”
― Erin Forbes, Fire & Ice: The Kindred Woods

“She could tell me a thousand things with her eyebrows alone, this girl. Sometimes I wanted to shave them off just to spite her.”
― L.J. Shen, Broken Knight

“You see all the other fellows were so active and earnest and all that sort of thing- always rampaging, and skirmishing, and scouring the desert sands, and pacing the margin of the sea, and chasing knights all over the place, and devouring damsels, and going on generally- whereas I liked to get my meals regular and then to prop my back against a bit of rock and snooze a bit, and wake up and think of things going on and how they kept going on just the same, you know!”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Reluctant Dragon

“Trite though it (used to) sound, real sexuality is about our struggles to connect with one another, to erect bridges across the chasms that separate selves. Sexuality is, finally, about imagination. Thanks to brave people's recognition of AIDS as a fact of life, we are beginning to realize that highly charged sex can take place in all sorts of ways we'd forgotten or neglected—in a conversational nuance; in a body's posture, a certain pressure in a held hand. Sex can be everywhere we are, all the time.”
― David Foster Wallace, Both Flesh and Not: Essays

“You are quick, for a dancing master, said Ser Meryn. You are slow, for a knight, Syrio replied.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride,
Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide,
Earth a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true,
And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Should one continue to follow the faith of a group that's cast him out? Shouldn't it stand to reason that if he was true to that faith that the group should have been true to him? Is it unreasonable to ask forgiveness of one who is all-forgiving?”
― T. A. Miles, Six Celestial Swords

“I have faced death this night, and I have called his bluff.”
― Lucien LaCroix

“Well then, take this thought with you for the dark hours to come: It is a ludicrous fiction that love conquers all, but it can, in fact, conquer quite a lot. I am Iason of the Blood, Knight of Arthur, King of the Britons, reborn into dark service in the year of Our Lord five hundred and sixty. My power is vast, and for none to arrogate but by my will and decree. My services are engaged, Selina. Tell me what you need to ease your pain in this, and it is yours.”
― Chris Dee, Cat-Tales Book 3

“Better to die a knight than live like that.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

“And we ask ourselves, if there is a God, how can this happen? Better to ask, if there is a God... must it be sane?”
― Lucien LaCroix

“Libraries are medieval forests masking opportunity and danger; every aisle is a path, every catalog reference a clue to the location of the Holy Grail. It is here that I become privy to the sacred songs of kings and the ballads of rogues. Here are tales of life-and-death struggles of other wayfarers as they battle personal dragons and woo fair maidens. Walking down this hallway, I am a knight entering the forest in search of the truth...”
― Jack Cavanaugh, A Hideous Beauty

“You’ve got to be kidding. A criminal is easy to spot.�� Reuben spoke to Alex
as he tied up his grieves, Alex tried to ignore his comment, but by the king
was she tired of his boasting.
“Enlighten me.�� She rolled her eyes but he didn’t notice, he almost cut her off
with how quickly he answered.
“My uncle, he’s a Templar, he taught me: The tip of the tail for one, Alex.
Those are the blasphemers. The petty thieves get a finger removed for each
offence. The hand for smuggling and an ear for petty disrespect of the divine.
Then, well, indefinite jail time or execution, so you’ll never have to run into
any of those breeds on the street.�� He straightened his belt rather confidently
before taking a comb to his greasy mane.
“And the ones who don’t get caught?�� Alex replied.
Reuben snapped back, “hah! We always catch them in the end.�� Punctuating
the conversation with his exit from the barracks.”
― Griffin Nichols