The wildlings seemed to think Ygritte a great beauty because of her hair; red hair was rare among the free folk, and those who had it were said to be kissed by fire, which was supposed to be lucky.

When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

When you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him.

I prefer to work with grey characters rather than black and white.

she would die as she had lived, with an axe in her hand and a laugh upon her lips.

A lot of fantasy names are too much. They’re too difficult to pronounce. I wanted the flavour of medieval England. I took actual names we still use today, like ‘Robert’, and in some case I tweaked them a little bit. I made ‘Edward’ into ‘Eddard’. If you look back at medieval times, no one knew how to spell their own names. There are a lot of variations that we’ve lost.

Free folk don't follow names, or little cloth animals sewn on a tunic," the King-Beyond-the-Wall had told him. "They won't dance for coins, they don't care how your style yourself or what that chain of office means or who your grandsire was. They follow strength. They follow the man.