Why should death make a man truthful, or even clever? The dead are likely dull fellows, full of tedious complaints - the ground's too cold, my gravestone should be larger, why does he get more worms than I do.

Lords are gold and knights steel, but two links can't make a chain. You also need silver and iron and lead, tin and copper and bronze and all the rest, and those are farmers and smiths and merchants and the like. A chain needs all sorts of metals, and a land needs all sorts of people.

Man wants to be the king o' the rabbits, he best wear a pair o' floppy ears.

Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time.

I always give my students exercises where they really have to open a vein and bleed all over the paper and that's the way you get the important characters. Sooner or later every writer worth reading writes a story his mother wouldn't read and having to get that stuff out is part of one's growth as a writer.

Unfortunately in television, for whatever reason, fantasy became thought of as a kids' genre.

Make no mistake, dwarf. I fought for you, but I do not love you'' ''It was your blade I needed'' Tyrion said, ''not your love.