844 Quotes by George R. R. Martin

I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.

I always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead. That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad-dûm and he falls into the gulf, and his last words are, ‘Fly, you fools’. What power that had, how that grabbed me. And then he comes back as Gandalf the White, and if anything he's sort of improved. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.

You can't hammer tin into iron, no matter how hard you beat it, but that doesn't mean it's useless.

Children are a battle of a different sort. ... A battle without banners or warhorns but no less fierce.

It had been more of a wish, actually, but it sounded better to call it a dream.

If I was a soldier going to war, I'd be pretty scared the night before a battle. It's a scary thing. And I want my readers to feel that fear as they turn the page.

I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps.

These old knights are more cunning than you think, or they would never have lived to see their first grey hair.

Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.