A man does not need to be a wizard to know truth from falsehood, not if he has eyes. You need only learn to read a face. Look at the eyes. The mouth. The muscles here, at the corners of the jaw, and here, where the neck joins the shoulders.

She yearned to see her mother again, and Robb and Bran and Rickon… but it was Jon Snow she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her “little sister.” She’d tell him, “I missed you,” and he’d say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything.

Start with short stories. After all, if you were taking up rock climbing, you wouldn't start with Mount Everest. So if you're starting fantasy, don't start with a nine-book series.

In order to get inside their skin, I have to identify with them. That includes even the ones who are complete bastards, nasty, twisted, deeply flawed human beings with serious psychological problems. Even them. When I get inside their skin and look out through their eyes, I have to feel a certain - if not sympathy, certainly empathy for them. I have to try to perceive the world as they do, and that creates a certain amount of affection.

I would choose freedom over comfort every time.

Tyrion: My gentle sister seems to have mistaken me for Ned Stark. Bronn: I hear he was taller. Tyrion: Not after Joff took off his head.

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