The things we love destroy us every time.

The line crystallizes a recurring Martin theme: attachment is both the source of meaning and the engine of suffering. To love—people, ideals, family, power, even stories—is to grant something the ability to wound you, because love creates vulnerability, divided loyalties, and stakes that can be exploited or lost. The absolutist phrasing (“every time”) emphasizes inevitability rather than melodrama: destruction here can mean grief, compromise, or the shattering of illusions, not only death. In Martin’s moral universe, characters are rarely undone by abstract evil; they are undone by what they cannot stop caring about, and by the choices love forces upon them.