I never wanted to see half the things I've seen, and I've never seen half the things I wanted to. I don't think wanting comes into it. You'd best go all the same.

The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy.

He raised his eyes. "Sister. See. This time I knew you." Asha's heart skipped a beat. "Theon?" His lips skinned back in what might have been a grin. Half his teeth were gone, and half those still left him were broken and splintered. "Theon," he repeated. "My name is Theon. You have to know your name.

So young," said Wyman Manderly, "Though mayhaps this was a blessing. Had he lived he would've grown up to be a Frey.

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

No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will be just a thousand-page description of snow blowing across the graves.

It's a fool boy who mocks a giant, and a mad world when a cripple has to defend him.