Ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow. Tyrion smiled. Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I'd feel sad about it. I will take that as high praise.
George R. R. Martin"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."
George R. R. MartinThere is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
George R. R. MartinThere are two kinds of writers. There are architects and gardeners. The architects do blueprints before they drive the first nail. The gardeners just dig a hole and plant the seed and see what comes up.
George R. R. MartinI think my very earliest stories were all intellectual exercises and I was writing from experiences I had never had about characters who were about an inch deep.
George R. R. MartinMuch as I admire Tolkien, I once again always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead. That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad-dรปm and he falls into the gulf, and his last words are, "Fly, you fools." What power that had, how that grabbed me. And then he comes back as Gandalf the White, and if anything he's sort of improved. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.
George R. R. Martin