Top 822 Quotes & Sayings by George R. R. Martin - Page 6

The best writing advice I had was [in] ‘Heinlein’s Rules for Writers’ by (American science fiction author) Robert A. Heinlein. His first rule is that you must write, and I was already doing that, but his second rule is, ‘You must finish what you write,’ and that had a big impact on me.

You're mine," she whispered. "Mine, as I'm yours. And if we die, we die. All men must die, Jon Snow. But first, we'll live.

You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots.

I want to weep, she thought. I want to be comforted. I'm so tired of being strong. I want to be foolish and frightened for once. Just for a small while, that's all....a day.....an hour.

I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That's like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft.

Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.

Those are brave men... lets go kill them

There’s part of me that loves words. But sometimes it feels like you’re trying to drive nails with your shoe.

Inside the room, a man and a woman were wrestling. They were both naked.

I wonder what the High Septon would have to say about the sanctity of oaths sworn while dead drunk, chained to a wall, with a sword pressed to your chest?

And I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things.

We all dream of things we cannot have.

When treating with liars, even an honest man must lie.

For they are the knights of summer, and winter is coming.

Sam loved to listen to music and make his own songs, to wear soft velvets, to play in the castle kitchen beside the cooks, drinking in the rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and blueberry tarts. His passions were books and kittens and dancing, clumsy as he was.

Gods and wonders always appear, to attend the birth of kings.

If ice can burn, then love and hate can mate.

Ten years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out. The only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were. That's my main concern, and always will be.

You wear your honor like a suit of armor... You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move.

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang.

The real issue lies in the North beyond the Wall. Stannis becomes one of the few characters fully to understand that, which is why in spite of everything he is a righteous man.

Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.

We're all the heroes of our own stories. So, when I am inside the head of a character who would otherwise be considered a villain, I have a great deal of affection for that character and I'm trying to see the world and the events through their eyes.

A man who won't listen can't hear.

The best calumnies are spiced with truth.

The man who never reads lives only one.

Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted her his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again.

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

Sleep is good, he said, And books are better.

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.

Every flight begins with a fall.

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

The wildlings seemed to think Ygritte a great beauty because of her hair; red hair was rare among the free folk, and those who had it were said to be kissed by fire, which was supposed to be lucky.

When we speak of the morrow nothing is ever certain.

Men have scars, women mysteries.

...if you dance with dragons, you must expect to burn.

When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

Gods be good, why would any man ever want to be king? When everyone was shouting King in the North, King in the North, I told myself ... swore to myself ... that I would be a good king, as honorable as Father, strong, just, loyal to my friends and brave when I faced my enemies ... now I can't even tell one from the other.

Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods

You've got a bold tongue, little man. One day, someone is like to cut it out and make you eat it.

The wide world is full of people wanting help, Jon. Would that some could find the courage to help themselves. - Lord Commander Mormont

She is not truly beautiful but something about her draws the eye.

Nothing burns like the cold.

If he must be alone, he would make solitude his armor.

Ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

...the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword." "...a ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.

When I sleep I turn into a wolf. Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. Do wolves dreams?

A lot of fantasy names are too much. They’re too difficult to pronounce. I wanted the flavour of medieval England. I took actual names we still use today, like ‘Robert’, and in some case I tweaked them a little bit. I made ‘Edward’ into ‘Eddard’. If you look back at medieval times, no one knew how to spell their own names. There are a lot of variations that we’ve lost.

There’s an old writing rule that says ‘Don’t have two character names start with the same letter’, but I knew at the beginning that I was going to have more than 26 characters, so I was in trouble there. Ultimately it comes down to what sounds right. And I struggle with that, finding the right name for a character. If I can’t find the right name I don’t know who the character is and I can’t proceed.

I was a journalism major, and I would take creative writing classes as part of that, but I would also look for opportunities to write stories for some of my other classes. So for my course in Scandinavian history, I asked if I could write historical fiction instead of term papers. Sometimes they’d say yes.

He understood the way that you could sometimes fall right into them, as if each page was a hole into another world.

For men, the answer was always the same and never farther away than the nearest sword. For a woman, a mother, the way was stonier and harder to know.

The gods are blind. And men see only what they wish" - Tyrion Lannister

Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next.

Robert was never the same after he put on that crown. Some men are like swords, made for fighting. Hang them up and they go to rust.

His eyes were open wounds beneath his heavy brows, a blue as dark as the sea by night.

Soon comes the cold, and the night that never ends.

You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.

Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.

And for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.