I'm a strong believer in telling stories through a limited but very tight third person point of view. I have used other techniques during my career, like the first person or the omniscient view point, but I actually hate the omniscient viewpoint. None of us have an omniscient viewpoint; we are alone in the universe. We hear what we can hear... we are very limited. If a plane crashes behind you I would see it but you wouldn't. That's the way we perceive the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters.

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.

She had killed him with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I’m the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate.

I love you too, sweet sister. But you're a fool. A beautiful golden fool.

Jon Snow: I'm not afraid to die. Mormont: Nor life, I hope.

I've written some standalone novels, but a book series allows fans in. There's much more intense involvement.

As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy.