Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you. George R. R. Martin More Quotes by George R. R. Martin More Quotes From George R. R. Martin Sometimes the best way to baffle them is to make moves that have no purpose, or even seem to work against you George R. R. Martin purpose way moving The snow drifted down and down, all in ghostly silence, and lay thick and unbroken on the ground. It was a place of whites and blacks and greys. White towers and white snow and white statues, black shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. A pure world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here. Yet she stepped out all the same. George R. R. Martin white dark sky Perhaps that is the secret. It is not what we do, so much as why we do it. George R. R. Martin secret And for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons. George R. R. Martin dragons night years Catelyn wanted to run to him, to kiss his sweet brow, to wrap him in her arms so tightly that he would never come to harm. George R. R. Martin kissing running sweet Ser Jaime?" Even in soiled pink satin and torn lace, Brienne looked more like a man in a gown than a proper woman."I am grateful, but...you were well away. Why come back?" A dozen quips came to mind, each crueler than the one before, but Jaime only shrugged. "I dreamed of you," he said. George R. R. Martin grateful mind men The most important thing for any aspiring writer, is to read! And not just the sort of thing you're trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You need to read everything. George R. R. Martin important writing book Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it. George R. R. Martin writing lying people 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. George R. R. Martin forever night children It's really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he's the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don't like it. George R. R. Martin hero two book And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes. George R. R. Martin reading philosophy sex Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. George R. R. Martin men past moving If H. P. Lovecraft and H. L. Mencken had ever collaborated, they might have come up with something like The Edge of Reason. This one will delight thinkers-and outrage true believers-of all stripes. George R. R. Martin stripes delight might 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. George R. R. Martin growing-up cat dog Eat your heart out, Rowling. Maybe you have billions of dollars and my Hugo, but you don't have readers like these. George R. R. Martin billions dollars reader Jon Snow had dreamed of leading men to glory just as King Daeron had, of growing up to be a conqueror. Now he was a man grown and the Wall was his, yet all he had were doubts. He could not even seem to conquer those. George R. R. Martin wall growing-up kings We know truth for the cruel instrument it is. Beauty is infinitely preferable to truth. George R. R. Martin truth-is instruments beauty The truth of it is, writers do have peculiar relationships with their characters. They are our children in more senses than one. They are born of our imaginations, carry much of ourselves in them, and embody whatever dreams we dream of immortality. George R. R. Martin dream character children There are two kinds of writers. There are architects and gardeners. The architects do blueprints before they drive the first nail. The gardeners just dig a hole and plant the seed and see what comes up. George R. R. Martin nails two firsts Nothing someone says before the word 'but' really counts. George R. R. Martin
