A Quote by George R. R. Martin

Turtles have always been my sigil, I suppose. When I was a kid, growing up in Bayonne, NJ, I lived in a federal housing project, and we were not allowed to have a dog or cats. The only pets I could have were turtles. So, I had an entire toy castle filled with dime-store turtles. I gave them all names, and since they were living in a toy castle, I decided they were all knights and kingsand I made up stories about how they killed each other and betrayed each other and fought for the kingdom. So, Game of Thrones, actually began with turtles. I decided later to recast it with actual human beings.
I can do a backflip on the spot. I learned how from watching 'Ninja Turtles' movies as a kid. Whenever the Turtles got in trouble with their teacher, Master Splinter, he'd make them practice backflips as punishment - and I was so focused on becoming one of the Turtles that I taught myself how to do one, too.
My favorite superheroes when I was younger were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and they still are. Simply because they rule and you've got 4 different personalities to choose from depending on your mood...And they're huge human-turtles!!
And the turtles, of course...all the turtles are free, as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.
My father collected turtles when he was young. My parent's wedding album, there's two pictures of them getting married and the rest are just pictures of turtles. I remember they had Galapagos tortoises that they had somehow imported illegally and a bunch of other turtles too. I like the animals themselves. They're so self-possessed and self-contained and there's something wise and mysterious about them. I also like that they are prehistoric animals.
Some of us are turtles; we crawl and struggle along, and we haven't maybe figured it out by the time we're 30. But the turtles have to keep on walking.
What did turtles evolve from? Really, I want to know. And for God’s sake, don’t say lizards, because turtles are nothing like lizards. They could not be more different.
I loved these turtles that were somehow mutants and teenagers, and they were ninjas. How cool is that?
The Ninja Turtles made me who I am today in a big way. It was my favorite show as a kid. It got me into meditation, martial arts, speed boarding, and generally like the positive person that I am today is because of the Turtles.
Growing up, I had a very vivid imagination and Leonardo was like my best imaginary friend that I spoke to. When things were tough, or I was scared in an unsafe environment, I always imagined that the Ninja Turtles would come to the rescue.
I was obsessed with the Turtles, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There's Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and my dad used to call me Callemundo, saying you're the fifth turtle.
Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time tells the story of a cosmologist whose speech is interrupted by a little old lady who informs him that the universe rests on the back of a turtle. Ah, yes, madame, the scientist replies, but what does the turtle rest on? The old lady shoots back: You can't trick me, young man. It's nothing but turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down.
But now all the natural secrets have been exposed, and it is likely that the turtles have been sold to laboratory scientists who want to remove their shells so that they can wire electrodes to the turtles' skin in order to monitor their increasing terror at the loss of their shells.
As a kid, my favorite adventures were to skip school and go into the sewage drains and talk to the turtles and open up packs of Topps Stadium Club baseball cards.
Turtles are very stable and have been around forever. But they have problems adapting. When humans came along, turtles came under serious threat. Biodiversity is good, and I think it is good in technology as well.
These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which were now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.
I had these cheap alien toys and I made up stories for them. They were space pirates. They didn’t have names so I made up names. These were the first stories I wrote. Even as a little kid I was thinking about torture.
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