George R. R. Martin Quotes

More details, more devils.

Trust is earned. Like gold.

My biggest dream was to ruin the lives of my readers and crush their souls... And I really think that worked out pretty well for me.

Fire consumes, but cold preserves.

One night, in his cups, he drank a jar of wildfire, after telling his friends it would transform him into a dragon, but the gods were kind and it transformed him into a corpse.

Once, I cut off a man's head, but he did not know it until he tried to brush his hair. Then it fell off.

Swords have been my life, not books. But every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness. Your father was not the first. King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.

A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.

Kings are falling like leaves this autumn.

a few days ago she had been wandering around with a swatch of black silk tied over her eyes. Syrio was teaching her to see with her ears and her nose and her skin, she told him. Before that, he had her doing spinds and back flips. "Arya, are you certain you want to persist in this?" She nodded. "Tomorrow we're going to catch cats." "Cats." Ned sighed.

It was a hollow victory they gave me. A crown...it was the girl I prayed them for. Your sister, safe... and mine again as she was meant to be. I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown?

She had put despair and fear aside, as if they were garments she did not choose to wear.

It was astonishing to see how angry Cersei could wax over accusations she knew perfectly well to be true.

He wants you to smile and smell sweet and be his lady love. He wants to hear you recite all your pretty little words the way the septa taught you. He wants you to love him... and fear him.

When I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly, he announces. When I woke, I couldn't... or so the maester said. But what if he lied? What do you mean? Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower? No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap. There is the window. Leap. What do you want? The world.

A man agrees with god as a raindrop agrees with the storm

A Lannister always pays his debts.

Ser Jaime?" Even in soiled pink satin and torn lace, Brienne looked more like a man in a gown than a proper woman."I am grateful, but...you were well away. Why come back?" A dozen quips came to mind, each crueler than the one before, but Jaime only shrugged. "I dreamed of you," he said.

His dagger was out, poised at her throat. “Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life.

Don’t call me Lord Snow.” The dwarf lifted an eyebrow. “Would you rather be called the Imp? Let them see that their words can cut you and you’ll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name take it make it your own. Then they can’t hurt you with it anymore.

He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death.

She narrowed her eyes. “What is our heart’s desire?” “Vengeance.” His voice was soft, as if he were afraid that someone might be listening. “Justice.” Prince Doran pressed the onyx dragon into her palm with his swollen, gouty fingers, and whispered, “Fire and blood.

No fight is hopeless till it has been fought.

She could not bear to look at him just now. If she did, she might well slap him again. Or cry. Or kiss him. And never know which was right and which was wrong and which was madness.

I wanted to write a big novel, something epic in scale.

She walked fast, to keep ahead of her fear.

I could have written a story about a well-adjusted family. Ned Stark comes down to King’s Landing and takes over and solves all their problems. Would that have been as exciting?

The gods made our bodies as well as our souls, is it not so? They give us voices, so we might worship them with song. They give us hands, so we might build them temples. And they give us desire, so we might mate and worship them in that way.

But what a man can do and what a man will do are two different things, he knew.

It’s being ready to accept rejection. You can work on a book for two years and get it published, and it’s like you may as well have thrown it down a well. It’s not all champagne and doing interviews with The New York Times.

Perhaps I will die too, she told herself, and the thought did not seem so terrible to her. If she flung herself from the window, she could put an end to her suffering, and in the years to come the singers would write songs of her grief. Her body would lie on the stones below, broken and innocent, shaming all those who had betrayed her. Sansa went so far as to cross the bedchamber and throw open the shutters ... but then her courage left her, and she ran back to her bed, sobbing.

Does he think to scare me? Arya kissed him where his nose should be and plucked the grave worm from his eye to eat it, but it melted like a shadow in her hand. The yellow skull was melting too, and the kindliest old man that she had ever seen was smiling down on her. "No one has ever tried to eat my worm before," he said. "Are you hungry, child?" Yes, she thought, but not for food.

I grew up with four T.V. channels. If you missed a show, you missed it. You gotta wait a week for the next one. I'd mail-order books: take a quarter, get an envelope, send off for it and wait until it arrived. I grew up waiting for things.

Jon lied ... loudly, as if that could make it true.

Those are brave men," he told Ser Balon in admiration. "Let's go kill them.

Anyone can be killed.

I’d be anonymous. That’s what I’d do differently.

You look pale, Sansa," Cersei observed. "Is your red flower still blooming?" "Yes" "How apt. The men will bleed out there, and you in here.

The heart lies and the head plays tricks on us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward, and in a way knowing the truth.

A hedge knight must hold tight to his pride. Without it, he was no more than a sellsword

Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be.

Of course you know him. Everyone knows a pear-shaped man.

Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?- How else? Though not till I'm done reading.

No man should live longer than his teeth.

She might have wept then, had not the sky begun to do it for her.

Why do the Gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle Earth.

And when you have it, what then? Some secrets are safer kept hidden. Some secrets are too dangerous to share, even with those you love and trust.