It's different for every writer. It's not a career for anyone who needs security. It's a career for gamblers. It's a career of ups and downs.

Life is not a song, sweetling. Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow.

Books are dead men talking.

Littlefinger: A trade envoy from Lys once observed to me that Lord Stannis must love his daughter very well, since he'd erected hundreds of statues of her all along the walls of Dragonstone. Tyrion: My lord, those are gargoyles.

Sam loved to listen to music and make his own songs, to wear soft velvets, to play in the castle kitchen beside the cooks, drinking in the rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and blueberry tarts. His passions were books and kittens and dancing, clumsy as he was.

The true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves.

There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.