Latest George R. R. Martin Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Not all books are for all people. We read for different reasons.

  George R. R. Martin

  Book, People, Different

  Source: thesource.com

• I believe that women are many different types of people. There are brave women, there are cowardly women, there are altruistic women, there are selfish women. Most people are a combination of the same.

  George R. R. Martin

  Selfish, Believe, People

  Source: thesource.com

• There are a lot of people out there who will write books, in which everything turns out nicely and the bad guys lose, the good guys win, the boy gets the girl and they live happily ever after. There's a million books like that and if that's the comfort you're looking for, you should read those books and not my books because that's not the kind of book that I am interested in.

  George R. R. Martin

  Girl, Book, Writing

  Source: thesource.com

• You can't just pick people for their hair color or the shape of their face. You have to go with the best actors.

  George R. R. Martin

  Hair, Color, People

  Source: thesource.com

• Historical fiction is not history. You're blending real events and actual historical personages with characters of your own creation.

  George R. R. Martin

  Real, Character, Historical

  Source: www.bernardcornwell.net

• 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.

  George R. R. Martin

  Hero, Character, Eye

  Source: collider.com

• It's very hard to find a good child actor. There are a lot of child actors out there, especially in America, and they're cute kids, but most child actors appear on sitcoms where their main role is to be cute and make funny little remarks.

  George R. R. Martin

  Cute, Children, Kids

  Source: collider.com

• I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent?

  George R. R. Martin

  Writing, Thinking, Agony

  "EIBF 2014: George R.R. Martin on Game Of Thrones, writing". www.denofgeek.com. August 15, 2014.

• 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.

  George R. R. Martin

  Philosophy, War, Thinking

  "EIBF 2014: George R.R. Martin on Game Of Thrones, writing". www.denofgeek.com. August 15, 2014.

• I always give my students exercises where they really have to open a vein and bleed all over the paper and that's the way you get the important characters. Sooner or later every writer worth reading writes a story his mother wouldn't read and having to get that stuff out is part of one's growth as a writer.

  George R. R. Martin

  Mother, Reading, Character

  "EIBF 2014: George R.R. Martin on Game Of Thrones, writing". www.denofgeek.com. August 15, 2014.

• I think my very earliest stories were all intellectual exercises and I was writing from experiences I had never had about characters who were about an inch deep.

  George R. R. Martin

  Writing, Character, Exercise

  "EIBF 2014: George R.R. Martin on Game Of Thrones, writing". www.denofgeek.com. August 15, 2014.

• Generally speaking, I'm much more in favour of penises entering vaginas than axes entering skulls. But the world seems to accept the violence a lot easier than the sex.

  George R. R. Martin

  Sex, Axes, Skulls

  "EIBF 2014: George R.R. Martin on Game Of Thrones, writing". www.denofgeek.com. August 15, 2014.

• One of the hardest parts of writing is writing from the gut or the heart or something like that rather than intellectually.

  George R. R. Martin

  Writing, Heart, Hardest

  Source: www.denofgeek.com

• I was just a kid selling monster stories to the kids in the projects, complete with a dramatic reading, making the werewolf sounds. My career was aborted early on because one of my main customers started to have nightmares and his mother came to my mother and my mother shut down my whole business.

  George R. R. Martin

  Mother, Reading, Kids

  "EIBF 2014: George R.R. Martin on Game Of Thrones, writing". www.denofgeek.com. August 15, 2014.

• I'm fond of all my characters so every time one doesn't make the cut I'm a little disappointed although I understand it.

  George R. R. Martin

  Character, Cutting, Littles

  "EIBF 2014: George R.R. Martin on Game Of Thrones, writing". www.denofgeek.com. August 15, 2014.

• Most people were startled to find out there were books that preceded Game Of Thrones. I'm a case of working forty years to be an overnight success.

  George R. R. Martin

  Book, Years, Games

  "EIBF 2014: George R.R. Martin on Game Of Thrones, writing". www.denofgeek.com. August 15, 2014.

• I know who's going to be on the throne [in the Gameof Thrones], at the end, so I better not say. But, there will be a few people sitting on it, before the end.

  George R. R. Martin

  People, Thrones, Sitting

  Source: collider.com

• I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie.

  George R. R. Martin

  Writing, Character, Play

  Source: collider.com

• A great many of the epic fantasies, from The Lord of the Rings onward, are about war, but to my mind, a lot of it doesn't really deal honestly with the consequences of war, what war does to us, as a society, what war does to us, as individuals, and the struggle for power, in the same way, and what we're fighting for.

  George R. R. Martin

  War, Struggle, Fighting

  Source: collider.com

• I love fantasy. I grew up reading fantasy. But, I wanted to put a somewhat different spin on it. The whole trope of absolute good versus absolute evil, which was wonderful in the hands of J.R. Tolkien, became cliche and rote in the hands of the many Tolkien imitators that followed.

  George R. R. Martin

  Reading, Hands, Evil

  Source: collider.com

• I had written three books [Games of Throne], at that point, and each one of them was better than the other. At a certain point, as the books were doing well, I started getting interest from Hollywood, from various producers and studios who were initially interested in doing a feature film. I met with some of those people and I had phone conversations with some of those people, but I didn't see it being done as a feature film.

  George R. R. Martin

  Book, Phones, Games

  Source: collider.com

• There are a number of things that I'm trying to get into the books. There's a meta-fictional aspect, if I may use that pretentious word, to writing anything. You're writing in the shadow of all the people that have gone before and, in a way, you're having a dialogue with them. As someone who's read J.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard and all the great fantasists before, this is almost my answer to them.

  George R. R. Martin

  Book, Writing, Numbers

  Source: collider.com