His sister liked to think of herself as Lord Tywin with teats, but she was wrong. Their father had been as relentless and implacable as a glacier, where Cercei was all wildfire, especially when thwarted.

One of the hardest parts of writing is writing from the gut or the heart or something like that rather than intellectually.

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it.

But Tolkien doesn't ask the question: What was Aragorn's tax policy?

Cersei Lannister: I shall wear this as a badge of honor. Robert Barathon: Wear it in silence or I'll honor you again.

Power resides where men believe it to reside.

I had written three books [Games of Throne], at that point, and each one of them was better than the other. At a certain point, as the books were doing well, I started getting interest from Hollywood, from various producers and studios who were initially interested in doing a feature film. I met with some of those people and I had phone conversations with some of those people, but I didn't see it being done as a feature film.