A lot of fantasy names are too much. They’re too difficult to pronounce. I wanted the flavour of medieval England. I took actual names we still use today, like ‘Robert’, and in some case I tweaked them a little bit. I made ‘Edward’ into ‘Eddard’. If you look back at medieval times, no one knew how to spell their own names. There are a lot of variations that we’ve lost.

You look pale, Sansa," Cersei observed. "Is your red flower still blooming?" "Yes" "How apt. The men will bleed out there, and you in here.

One of the hardest parts of writing is writing from the gut or the heart or something like that rather than intellectually.

One of your northmen hit me with a morningstar during the battle on the Green Fork. I escaped him by falling off my horse. (Tyrion)

He never wanted love, though. You cannot eat love, nor buy a horse with it, nor warm your halls on a cold night.

Sooner would be better than later, and now would be better than sooner." - Tyrion

That was the way of this cold world, where men fished the sea and dug in the ground and died, whilst women brought forth short-lived children from beds of blood and pain.