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

A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.

I've said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense.

Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night.

I have an instinctual distrust of conventional happy endings.

The letter . . . What did your lords make of it, I wonder?” Stannis snorted. “Celtigar pronounced it admirable. If I showed him the contents of my privy, he would declare that admirable as well.

A lot of writing takes place in the subconscious, and it's bound to have an effect.