It would be far less interesting, after 'The Empire Strikes Back,' to have an hour-long movie in between 'Empire' and 'Return of the Jedi,' where Luke is training. It's so much cooler to cut from end of 'Empire' to beginning of 'Return,' where he's become the Jedi.

McCullers is one of those rare writers who remembers what childhood is like. Not incidents, which anyone can recall, but states of mind, which are so difficult to recreate.

For every Book of Job, there's a Book of Leviticus, featuring some of the most boring prose ever written. But if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would better reward long study? And has there ever been a more beautiful distillation of existential philosophy than the Book of Ecclesiastes?

Simon Critchley's 'The Book of Dead Philosophers' - it's a quick thumbnail sketches of philosophers through the ages.

Iwan Rheon is a great actor, and he's going to go on to a long brilliant career. And most of the characters he'll play will not be evil. He's not one of those who can only play a bad guy.

We always talk about how the first several seasons were faithful to the books, and anybody who wanted to could go onto Wikipedia and learn Ned Stark gets beheaded or about The Red Wedding, and most people don't want to know - because why ruin a story?

It's crazy enough to be the person crawling through the bushes in Northern Ireland with a telescopic lens taking pictures - there are crazy people out there. But the idea that people want to go to sites and find out those spoilers... it's like if there was a website called Last Pages of Great Books, would you read that?

You just do the best you can and hope people see the potential in it.

The reality is, 'Game of Thrones' has been a successful show for HBO, which has put us in a position to come and pitch another show and get them excited about it. And that's what helped get us here.

Just the notion of falling for someone, that involves weakness.