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.

I love you too, sweet sister. But you're a fool. A beautiful golden fool.

Great wrongs have been done you, but the past is dust. The future may yet be won.

I have done a lot of work in Hollywood myself. I worked in television for roughly 10 years, from the mid-'80s to mid-'90s. And I was on staff at a couple of shows. I did some feature films, including originals and adaptations.

A bag of dragons buys a man's silence for a while, but a well-placed quarrel buys it forever.

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.

I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent?