George R. R. Martin Quotes

It was the feel of it, the love of it, not the thought: it was instinct and reflex and knowing the wind, and Maris was the wind.

A word, and Dany could have her head off … yet then what would she have? A head? If life was worthless, what was death?

My sister has mistaken me for a mushroom. She keeps me in the dark and feeds me shit.

"You know nothing John Snow" — the wildling Ygritte

The wolf pup loved her, even if no one else did.

Sometimes I dream about it, I’m walking down this long empty hall. My voice echoes all around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening doors, shouting names. I don’t even know who I’m looking for. Most nights it’s my father, but sometimes it’s Robb instead, or my little sister Arya, or my uncle. Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It’s black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don’t want to. I’m afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it’s not them I’m afraid of. I scream that I’m not a Stark, that this isn’t my place, but it’s no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream” -Jon Snow

I was not born this morning, Lannister.”
“No, but you’re like to die this afternoon.

Much as I admire Tolkien, and I do admire Tolkien — he’s been a huge influence on me, and his Lord of the Rings is the mountain that leans over every other fantasy written since and shaped all of modern fantasy — there are things about it, the whole concept of the Dark Lord, and good guys battling bad guys, Good versus Evil, while brilliantly handled in Tolkien, in the hands of many Tolkien successors, it has become kind of a cartoon. We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys. It is certainly a genuine, legitimate topic as the core of fantasy, but I think the battle between Good and Evil is waged within the individual human hearts. We all have good in us and we all have evil in us, and we may do a wonderful good act on Tuesday and a horrible, selfish, bad act on Wednesday, and to me, that’s the great human drama of fiction. I believe in gray characters, as I’ve said before. We all have good and evil in us and there are very few pure paragons and there are very few orcs. A villain is a hero of the other side, as someone said once, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that, and that’s the interesting thing. In the case of war, that kind of situation, so I think some of that is definitely what I’m aiming at.

A bruise is a lesson... and each lesson makes us better.

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

Ah, I could tell you everything about her. Who she was, how we met, the color of her eyes, and the shape of her nose. I can see her, right in front of me. She's more real than you are.

How could it end any other way? The beast was greater than they were, a force of nature. The beast was like the river, eternal. It had no doubts, no thoughts, no dreams or plans.

Sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler.

I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.

Underneath his steal and wool and boiled leather, Jaime Lannister was a tapestry of cuts and scabs and bruises.