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George R. R. Martin

George R. R. Martin is an American author and screenwriter of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

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  • In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.
    • Interview with Infinity Plus, February 2001

  • Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back. Screw Gandalf. He had a great death and the characters should have had to go on without him.
    • on a panel at Odyssey Con 2008, April 2008

  • 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.
    • Official blog, July 2007

  • I was always intensely Romantic, even when I was too young to understand what that meant.
    • Interview with Infinity Plus, February 2001

  • The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real... for a moment at least... that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smoke-stacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
    We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the song the sirens sang. 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.
    They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.
    • The Faces of Fantasy, 1996

  • Art is not a democracy. People don't get to vote on how it ends.
    • Interview with GamePro magazine, 8 April 2003

  • Back at the Philadelphia Worldcon (which seems a million years ago), I announced the famous five-year gap: I was going to skip five years forward in the story, to allow some of the younger characters to grow older and the dragons to grow larger, and for various other reasons. I started out writing on that basis in 2001, and it worked very well for some of my myriad characters but not at all for others, because you can't just have nothing happen for five years. If things do happen you have to write flashbacks, a lot of internal retrospection, and that's not a good way to present it. I struggled with that essentially wrong direction for about a year before finally throwing it out, realizing there had to be another interim book. That became A Feast for Crows, where the action is pretty much continuous from the preceding book. Even so, that only accounts for one year. Why the four after that? I don't know, except that this was a very tough book to write -- and it remains so, because I've only finished half. Going in, I thought I could do something about the length of the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, roughly 1,200 pages in manuscript. But I passed that and there was a lot more to write. Then I passed the length of the third book, A Storm of Swords, which was something like 1,500 pages in manuscript and gave my publishers all around the world lots of production problems. I didn't really want to make any cuts because I had this huge story to tell. We started thinking about dividing it in two and doing it as A Feast for Crows, Parts One and Two, but the more I thought about that the more I really did not like it. Part One would have had no resolution whatsoever for 18 viewpoint characters and their 18 stories. Of course this is all part of a huge megaseries so there is not a complete resolution yet in any of the volumes, but I try to give a certain sense of completion at the end of each volume -- that a movement of the symphony has wrapped up, so to speak.
    • Interview with Locus Magazine, November 2005

  • I think that for science fiction, fantasy, and even horror to some extent, the differences are skin-deep. I know there are elements in the field, particularly in science fiction, who feel that the differences are very profound, but I do not agree with that analysis. I think for me it is a matter of the furnishings. An elf or an alien may in some ways fulfill the same function, as a literary trope. It’s almost a matter of flavor. The ice cream can be chocolate or it can be strawberry, but it’s still ice cream. The real difference, to my mind, is between romantic fiction, which all these genres are a part of, and mimetic fiction, or naturalistic fiction.

  • With great power comes great responsibility, Stan Lee once wrote. Spidey's credo articulates the basic premise of every superhero universe, including ours. But Lord Acton wrote that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The tension between those two truths is where the drama comes in. My own heroes are the dreamers, those men and women who tried to make the world a better place than when they found it, whether in small ways or great ones. Some succeeded, some failed, most had mixed results... but it is the effort that's heroic, as I see it. Win or lose, I admire those who fight the good fight.

  • Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the crudest is the one called love.
    • from the novella Meathouse Man

  • The House of Fantasy is built of stone and wood and furnished in High Medieval. Its people travel by horse and galley, fight with sword and spell and battle-axe, communicate by palantir or raven, and break bread with elves and dragons.
    The House of Science Fiction is built of duralloy and plastic and furnished in Faux Future. Its people travel by starship and aircar, fight with nukes and tailored germs, communicate by ansible and laser, and break protein bars with aliens.
    The House of Horror is built of bone and cobwebs and furnished in Ghastly Gothick. Its people travel only by night, fight with anything that will kill messily, communicate in screams and shrieks and gibbers, and sip blood with vampires and werewolves.
    • The Heart in Conflict, from Dreamsongs

  • I've been killing characters my entire career, maybe I'm just a bloody minded bastard, I don't know, [but] when my characters are in danger, I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps.

  • As a writer, my goal, (which I'm never going to achieve, and I know that, and no writer can achieve that,) but my goal is to make you almost live the books... I want you to fall through that page and feel as if these things are happening to you.

  • There are many different kinds of writers, I like to use the analogy of architects and gardeners. There are some writers who are architects, and they plan everything, they blueprint everything, and they know before the drive the first nail into the first board what the house is going to look like and where all the closets are going to be, where the plumbing is going to run, and everything is figured out on the blueprints before they actually begin any work whatsoever. And then there are gardeners who dig a little hole and drop a seed in and water it with their blood and see what comes up, and sort of shape it. They sort of know what seed they've planted - whether it's an oak or an elm, or a horror story or a science fiction story, but they don't how big it's going to be, or what shape it's going to take. I am much more a gardener than an architect.

  • Sure. Some of the reviews have been very flattering, but the series is not finished yet. The end needs to be as strong as the beginning.
    • Interview with Patrick St-Denis on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, May 01, 2006 (talking about his magnum opus, A Song of Ice and Fire)

A Song of Ice and Fire (1996-)

  • A knight who remembered his vows.
    • Steely Pate in The Hedge Knight (1998). Describing Duncan the Tall, to explain why the commoners are on his side.

  • In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women [...]
    • The Hedge Knight (1998). Start of the knighting ceremony

  • Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death... I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.
    • Vow of the Night's Watch

  • Winter is coming.
    • Words of House Stark

  • Valar morghulis.
    • An old saying in High Valyrian

  • In a coat of Red or a coat of Gold a lion still has claws. 'And mine are long and sharp, my lord, as long and sharp as yours.
    • A line in the song "The Reins of Castamere." (A song written about the destruction of house Tarbeck and House Rein brought about by Lord Tywin Lannister.)

A Game of Thrones (1996)

  • "We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. "The wildlings are dead."
    • The Prologue

  • The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer.
    • Bran (I)

  • "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"
    "That is the only time a man can be brave."
    • Bran & Ned. Bran(I)

  • A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.
    • Lord Eddard Stark. Bran(I)

  • Generations of capering fools in motley have won me the right to dress badly and say any damn thing that comes into my head.
    • Tyrion Lannister. Jon(I)

  • The things I do for love.
    • Jaime Lannister. Bran (II)

  • "I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities."
    • Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion (I)

  • "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. They never are."
    • Ser Jorah Mormont in Chapter 23, Daenerys (III)
    • Context: Daenerys claims the commoners are praying for her to return and claim her rightful throne.

  • "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."
    • Cersei Lannister in Chapter 48, Eddard (XII)

A Clash of Kings (1998)

  • Prince Tommen was not so obedient. "I'm supposed to ride against the straw man."
    "Not today" [Joffrey said].
    "But I want to ride!"
    "I don't care what you want."
    "Mother said I could ride."
    "She said," Princess Myrcella agreed.
    "Mother said," mocked the king. "Don't be childish."
    "We're children," Myrcella declared haughtily. "We're supposed to be childish."
    The Hound laughed. "She has you there."
    • Sansa (I)

  • "Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe . . . an infant girl, say, still at her mother's breast . . . would you do it? Without question?"
    "Without question? No." The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together. "I'd ask how much."
    • Tyrion and Bronn, Tyrion (II)

  • (a confrontation concerning someone bound for the Night's Watch)
    "I'll have the boy."
    "You'll have no one," Yoren said stubbornly. "There's laws on such things."
    The gold cloak drew a shortsword. "Here's your law."
    Yoren looked at the blade. "That's no law, just a sword. Happens I got one too."
    • Arya (III)

  • Kings have no friends, only subjects and enemies.
    • Stannis Baratheon (Catelyn III)

  • There are no men like me. There's only me.
    • Jaime Lannister in Chapter 56, Catelyn (VII)

  • So many vows . . . they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other.
    • Jaime Lannister in Chapter 56, Catelyn (VII)

A Storm of Swords (2000)


  • "You'll wear your Chains, Kingslayer"
    "You figure you'll row all the way to king's Landing, Wench."
    "You will call me Brienne, not Wench."
    "My name is Ser Jaime. Not Kingslayer."
    "Do you deny you slew a king?"
    "No. Do you deny your sex? If so unlace those breaches and show me. I'd ask you to open you bodice but from the look of you that wouldn't prove much"
    • Jaime (I)

  • "Be quiet Cersei. Joffrey, when your enemies defy you, you giev them steel. However, when they bend the knee, you help him to their feet, elsewise no-one will bend the knee"
    • Tywin Lannister
  • "You know nothing, Jon Snow."
    • Ygritte

  • "Have they told you who I am?"
    "Some dead man"
    • Gregor Clegane

  • "Well sir, who better to command the black cloaks than him who commanded the gold cloaks?"
    "Anyone I should think, even the cook."
    • Stannis Baratheon

  • "Another name? Oh, certainly. And when the Faceless Men come to kill me, I'll say, 'No, you have the wrong man, I'm a different dwarf with a hideous facial scar.'"
    Both Lannisters laughed at the absurdity of it all.
    • Tyrion to Jaime

A Feast for Crows (2005)

  • "The war of the Ninepenny Kings?" [asked Hyle Hunt.]
    "So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war though. That it was."
    • Brienne

  • I fear what little law and order left to us by the five kings will not survive the three Queens.
    • Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish

A Dance with Dragons (2010?)

  • Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter.
    • Jon (I)

Others about Martin


  • "Martin's a saint, in my opinion. Some of his fans treat him very poorly. If I had to put up with that sort of thing for as long as he has, I probably would have done something very angry by now..."
    • Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear
 
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