Top 822 Quotes & Sayings by George R. R. Martin - Page 4

You should grieve if a fictional character is killed. You should care.

What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple... Real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with... My people who are trying to rule don't have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise king.

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.

I’d be anonymous. That’s what I’d do differently.

When you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him.

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.

There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

You'll find truth in your looking glass, not on the tongues of men.

Men will always underestimate you, he said, and their pride will make them want to vanquish you quickly, lest it be said that a woman tried them sorely. Let them spend their strength in furious attacks, whilst you conserve your own. Wait and watch, girl, wait and watch.

I swear to you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one.

Some truths did not bear saying, and some lies were necessary.

I have been despised by better men than you.

Great wrongs have been done you, but the past is dust. The future may yet be won.

Words are like arrows, Arianne. Once loosed, you cannot call them back. - Areo Hotah

As we sin, so do we suffer

I'm not a writer who's preaching some particular philosophy or something but the big questions do concern me and I like to make my readers think and debate and argue with each other and look at some aspect of the world or some act of governance or war or power and have an angle they haven't considered before, and that's something I strive for and hopefully have accomplished.

Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side?

There are no heroes...in life, the monsters win.

Perhaps that is the secret. It is not what we do, so much as why we do it.

If I die, I die friendless and abandoned. What choice did that leave him, but to live?

A lord must learn that sometimes words can accomplish what swords cannot.

No one who wears a crown is ever safe.

Drifting snowflakes brushed her face as light as lover’s kisses, and melted on her cheeks. At the center of the garden, beside the statue of the weeping woman that lay broken and half-buried on the ground, she turned her face up to the sky and closed her eyes. She could feel the snow on her lashes, taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of innocence. The taste of dreams.

A lord may love the men that he commands, but he cannot be a friend to them. One day he may need to sit in judgement on them, or send them forth to die.

The truth is all around you, plain to behold. The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good. Death and life. Everywhere, opposites.

Anger was better than tears, better than grief, better than guilt.

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

Only a fool humbles himself when the world is so full of men eager to do that job for him. (Theon Greyjoy)

The gods don’t care about men, no more than kings care about peasants.

Wine makes all things possible.

What's dead may never die.

If there are gods, why is the world so full of pain and injustice?' 'Because of men like you.

All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.

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

A man who fights for coin is loyal only to his purse.

Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester and poison the soul.

I'm honest. It's the world that's awful.

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

He pushed himself to his feet. “Don’t lie, Sansa. I am malformed, scarred, and small, but…” she could see him groping “…abed, when the candles are blown out, I am made no worse than other men. In the dark, I am the Knight of Flowers.” He took a draught of wine. “I am generous. Loyal to those who are loyal to me. I’ve proven I’m no craven. And I am cleverer than most, surely wits count for something. I can even be kind. Kindness is not a habit with us Lannisters, I fear, but I know I have some somewhere. I could be… I could be good to you.

It was the easiest thing in the world for Arya to step up behind him and stab him. “Is there gold hidden in the village?” she shouted as she drove the blade up through his back. “Is there silver? Gems?” She stabbed twice more. “Is there food? Where is Lord Beric?” She was on top of him by then, still stabbing. “Where did he go? How many men were with him? How many knights? How many bowmen? How many, how many, how many, how many, how many, how many? is there gold in the village?

I've always taken that as my guiding principle and the rest is just set dressing. You can have dragons in it, or aliens and starships, or a western about a gunslinger, or even literary fiction, and ultimately you're still writing about the human heart in conflict with itself.

One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.

The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.

Tomorrow's trials concerned her more than yesterday's triumphs.

Give me a good sharp knife and a good sharp cheese and I’m a happy man.

We will fight a battle, and then we will rest. Alive or dead, we'll rest." - Jon Snow

We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.

There's no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it.

What do we say to the Lord of Death?" "Not today.

No fight is hopeless till it has been fought.

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.

There are no men like me. There's only me

Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.

Man wants to be the king o' the rabbits, he best wear a pair o' floppy ears.

My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer and I have my mind...and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge. That's why I read so much Jon Snow.

Knowledge is a Weapon, Jon. Arm yourself well before you ride forth to Battle.

My brother is undoubtedly arrogant," Tyrion Lannister replied. "My father is the soul of avarice, and my sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I, however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for you?

You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you.

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