The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.

He very often wept in church. Living up the Moyea with plenty of small chores to distract him, he forgot he was a sad man. When the hymns began, he remembered.

He saw no sign of their Bible, either. If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Grainier that there had come a fire stronger than God.

All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dreamlike business he’d ever witnessed waking—the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds high and white, catching daylight from beyond the valley, others ribbed and gray and pink, the lowest of them rubbing the peaks of Bussard and Queen mountains; and beneath this wondrous sky the black valley, utterly still, the train moving through it making a great noise but unable to wake this dead world.

It was only when you left it alone that a tree might treat you as a friend. After the blade bit in, you had yourself a war.

"Hva skal jeg si til moren din hvis jeg sender sønnen hennes hjem med en nål som sitter fast i halsen ?" "Du kjeftet aldri på Om når han gjorde det" . " Det er annerledes. Han er vant med det, han har vokst opp hos skreddere".

Der er ikke det at hun (Oline) har et uekte barn som gjør at folk dømmer henne så hardt. Det som setter henne i en særstilling, er det at hun ikke vil fortelle hvem han er, han som er far til barnet hennes. Det er største synda, og slik blir Margret mer lausunge enn hun ellers ville ha blitt.

[.....]..det er hardt å møte blikka fra ei bygd som ikke vil glømme.

"Vi ser ikke alt på samme måte. Jeg må ta mine egne avgjørelser, og jeg må vite nok til å kunne gjøre det. Jeg vil vite om fortiden min, så jeg kan begynne å leve mitt eget liv, pappa"

Men noen ganger hender det at folk ikke har noe valg. Noen ganger griper byen fatt i deg, borer klørne sine i deg og nekter å slippe taket.

Et liv uten verdighet er ikke noe liv.