It is better to be seen as cruel than foolish.

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

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.

The sea is never weary. I must be as tireless.

Turtles have always been my sigil, I suppose. When I was a kid, growing up in Bayonne, NJ, I lived in a federal housing project, and we were not allowed to have a dog or cats. The only pets I could have were turtles. So, I had an entire toy castle filled with dime-store turtles. I gave them all names, and since they were living in a toy castle, I decided they were all knights and kingsand I made up stories about how they killed each other and betrayed each other and fought for the kingdom. So, Game of Thrones, actually began with turtles. I decided later to recast it with actual human beings.

The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy.

There are too many steps in this castle, and it seems to me they add a few every night, just to vex me" - Maester Cressen