It’s being ready to accept rejection. You can work on a book for two years and get it published, and it’s like you may as well have thrown it down a well. It’s not all champagne and doing interviews with The New York Times.

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

His eyes were open wounds beneath his heavy brows, a blue as dark as the sea by night.

He did not know which was more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares.

She was no stranger to waiting, after all. Her man had always made her wait.

I can be humbler than anyone.

"You look different now. Like a proper little girl," (said Gendry.) "I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns," (said Arya.) "Nice, though. A nice oak tree. [...] You even smell nice for a change."