Littlefinger looked like a boy who had just taken a furtive bite from a honeycomb. He was TRYING to watch for bees, but the honey was so sweet.

A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.

I heard of a man who had a razor made of Valyrian steel. He cut his head off trying to shave.

If I die, I die friendless and abandoned. What choice did that leave him, but to live?

Much as I admire Tolkien, I once again always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead. That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad-dûm and he falls into the gulf, and his last words are, "Fly, you fools." What power that had, how that grabbed me. And then he comes back as Gandalf the White, and if anything he's sort of improved. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.

Nobody likes cravens,” he said uncomfortably. “I wish we hadn’t helped him. What if they think we’re craven too?” "You're too stupid to be craven,” Pyp told him. “I am not,” Grenn said. “Yes you are. If a bear attacked you in the woods, you’d be too stupid to run away.” “I would not,” Grenn insisted. “I’d run away faster than you.” He stopped suddenly, scowling when he saw Pyp’s grin and realized what he’d just said.

The prejudice is still there, but it's breaking down. You have writers like Michael Chabon and The Yiddish Policemen's Union. He's a writer who's determined to break down genre barriers. He's done amazing things.