George R. R. Martin Quotes

When treating with liars, even an honest man must lie.

For the night is dark and full of terrors.

Don't write outlines; I hate outlines.

There are too many steps in this castle, and it seems to me they add a few every night, just to vex me" - Maester Cressen

She was no stranger to waiting, after all. Her man had always made her wait.

I had a couple of friends, but I was mostly the kid with his nose in a book.

We look up at the same stars and see such different things." - Jon Snow

A sweet face oft hides a sinner's heart.

There are a lot of people out there who will write books, in which everything turns out nicely and the bad guys lose, the good guys win, the boy gets the girl and they live happily ever after. There's a million books like that and if that's the comfort you're looking for, you should read those books and not my books because that's not the kind of book that I am interested in.

The snow drifted down and down, all in ghostly silence, and lay thick and unbroken on the ground. It was a place of whites and blacks and greys. White towers and white snow and white statues, black shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. A pure world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here. Yet she stepped out all the same.

Mother, I want to see him fly!

The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.

his snores sounded like ducks mating.

Ten years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out. The only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were. That's my main concern, and always will be.

Robb: Uncle Benjen said to send you to the stables if I saw you. Jon: I have one more farewell to make. Robb: Then I haven't seen you.

An honest kiss, a little kindness, everyone deserves that much, however big or small.

Truly, sister, you were born to be a widow. (Tyrion to Cersei)

You little fool. Tears are not a woman's only weapon. You've got another one between your legs, and you'd best learn to use it. You'll find men use their swords freely enough. Both kinds of swords.

The women are the strong ones, truly.

A true man does what he will, not what he must.

Women do not forget. Women do not forgive.

I've said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense.

A great many of the epic fantasies, from The Lord of the Rings onward, are about war, but to my mind, a lot of it doesn't really deal honestly with the consequences of war, what war does to us, as a society, what war does to us, as individuals, and the struggle for power, in the same way, and what we're fighting for.

A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face.

Sins may be forgiven. Crimes require punishment.

There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man.

Sometimes I think everyone is just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending is how you get brave, I don't know.

When I sleep I turn into a wolf. Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. Do wolves dreams?

Men of honor will do things for their children that they would never consider doing for themselves.

The white horse and the black one wheeled like lovers at a harvest dance, the riders throwing steel in place of kisses.

I worked out of Hollywood for 10 years and I had my heart broken half a dozen times, so I know all the things that can go wrong.

I want to weep, she thought. I want to be comforted. I'm so tired of being strong. I want to be foolish and frightened for once. Just for a small while, that's all....a day.....an hour.

I have done a lot of work in Hollywood myself. I worked in television for roughly 10 years, from the mid-'80s to mid-'90s. And I was on staff at a couple of shows. I did some feature films, including originals and adaptations.

Nothing. My father is very good at doing nothing. He calls it thinking.

You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers.

First rule, stick them with the pointy end!

Catelyn had never liked this godswood. She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers.

There are a number of things that I'm trying to get into the books. There's a meta-fictional aspect, if I may use that pretentious word, to writing anything. You're writing in the shadow of all the people that have gone before and, in a way, you're having a dialogue with them. As someone who's read J.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard and all the great fantasists before, this is almost my answer to them.

Sam loved to listen to music and make his own songs, to wear soft velvets, to play in the castle kitchen beside the cooks, drinking in the rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and blueberry tarts. His passions were books and kittens and dancing, clumsy as he was.

I like dogs better than knights. A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face. He cupped her under the jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinchingher painfully. And that's more than little birds can do, isn't it? I never got my song.

Lords are gold and knights steel, but two links can't make a chain. You also need silver and iron and lead, tin and copper and bronze and all the rest, and those are farmers and smiths and merchants and the like. A chain needs all sorts of metals, and a land needs all sorts of people.

One of the things I love, and I'm a voracious reader as well as a writer, is books that surprise me, that are not predictable.

I never finished any of my early stories. They were all beginnings, an endless number of beginnings.

A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man's life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose. (Maester Aemon)

The cable makers are the ones who are willing to take risks and do something original and push the envelope some.

but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it. It's easier just to sit down ot go to sleep. They say you don't feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it's like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like.

The man is as useless as nipples on a breastplate.

If the day comes when you would find me again, give that coin to any man from Braavos, and say these words to him--valar morghulis.