The great thing about reading is that it broadens your life

Start with short stories. After all, if you were taking up rock climbing, you wouldn't start with Mount Everest. So if you're starting fantasy, don't start with a nine-book series.

For herself, she wanted sleet and ice, howling winds, thunder to shake the very stones of the Red Keep. She wanted a storm to match her rage.

Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman? (wonders Lady Catelyn Stark)

Soon comes the cold, and the night that never ends.

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.

I have a hole where my heart should be, she thought, and nowhere else to go.