There are a number of things that I'm trying to get into the books. There's a meta-fictional aspect, if I may use that pretentious word, to writing anything. You're writing in the shadow of all the people that have gone before and, in a way, you're having a dialogue with them. As someone who's read J.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard and all the great fantasists before, this is almost my answer to them.

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

With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I'm all of the actors and I'm the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I'm all of that. So if it's good or bad, it's all up to me.

Robert was never the same after he put on that crown. Some men are like swords, made for fighting. Hang them up and they go to rust.

If you would wed, wed. If not, take your pleasure where you find it. There's little enough of it in this world." - Oberyn

I wrote six pilots, none of which ever got picked up. When you stop trying, it then it falls in your lap.

The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice. So there is magic beyond the Wall after all.