George R. R. Martin

One of the things I love, and I'm a voracious reader as well as a writer, is books that surprise me, that are not predictable.

When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone.

I spent a whole summer working on what proved to be 'A Game of Thrones'.

It all goes back and back," Tyrion thought, "to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.

They say night's beauties fade at dawn, and the children of wine are oft disowned in the morning light.

In my dreams, I kill him every night,' Robert admitted. 'A thousand deaths will still be less than he deserves'.

One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.

I've always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they're still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self.

The heart lies and the head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true.

When you have known the kiss of a flaying knife, a laugh loses all its power to hurt you.

When you smell our candles burning, what does it make you think of, my child?" Winterfell, she might have said. I smell snow and smoke and pine needles. I smell the stables. I smell Hodor laughing, and Jon and Robb battling in the yard, and Sansa singing about some stupid lady fair. I smell the crypts where the stone kings sit. I smell hot bread baking. I smell the godswood. I smell my wolf. I smell her fur, almost as if she were still beside me. "I don't smell anything," she said.

Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature. -- Lyanna

We're children. We're supposed to be childish.

Even in dreams, you could not fall forever.

Why ask for truth," Ser Barristan said softly, "if you close your ears to it?

We're setting up mechanisms where we can kill human beings with drones and missiles where you're sitting at a console and pressing the button. We never have to hear their whimpering, or hear them begging for their mother, or dying in horrible realities around us. I don't know if that's necessarily such a good thing.

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it.

In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

His sister liked to think of herself as Lord Tywin with teats, but she was wrong. Their father had been as relentless and implacable as a glacier, where Cercei was all wildfire, especially when thwarted.

There is magic in my universe, but it's pretty low magic compared to other fantasies.

Sometimes the best way to baffle them is to make moves that have no purpose, or even seem to work against you