George R. R. Martin Quotes

The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk. Darkness will make you strong.

And what lesson can we draw from Volantene history?”
“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.

Whites were bright as fresh-fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they looked like holes in the world.

It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel.

He made plans to keep himself sane, built castles of hope in the dark.

There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.

The cold gods,” she said. “The ones in the night. The white shadows.

Every child knows its mother, Dany thought. When the seas go dry and the mountains blow in the wind like leaves.

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.

"it is real, all of it, he thought, the wars, the intrigues, the great bloody game, and me in the center of it... me, the dwarf, the monster, the one they scorned and laughed at, but now i hold it all, the power, the city, the girl. this was what i was made for, and gods forgive me, but i do love it... and her. and her." (tyrion lannister)

Let them see that
their words can cut you, and you’ll never be free of the mockery

All kings must be butchers or meat.

"The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends," Ser Jorah told her. "It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace." He gave a shrug. "They never are."

Vengeane, Justice. Fire and Blood

The battle between Good and Evil is a theme of much of fantasy. But I think the battle between Good and Evil is fought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make. It’s not like evil dresses up in black clothing and you know, they’re really ugly. These are some of the things that Tolkien did; he made them work fabulously, but in the hands of his imitators, they become total clichés. I mean the orc-like creatures who always do dress in black and... they’re really ugly and they’ve got facial deformities or something. You can tell that if somebody’s ugly, he must be evil. And then Tolkien’s heroes are all very attractive people and all that, of course, again this became cliché in the hands of the Tolkien imitators.