I wanted to write a big novel, something epic in scale.
I suppose I’m a lapsed Catholic. You would consider me an atheist or agnostic.
I prefer to work with grey characters rather than black and white.
I have some other novels I want to write. I have a lot of short stories – I love the short story.
I have idea files of books that I want to write one of these days, stories I want to write one of these days, but I’ll probably never get to them.
I have always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth.
I have always been a dark writer.
I’m a huge fan of Tolkien. I read those books when I was in junior high school and high school, and they had a profound effect on me. I’d read other fantasy before, but none of them that I loved like Tolkien.
I’ve always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they’re still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self.
The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.
A dead enemy is a joy forever.
Every man must die, Jon Snow. But first he must live.
Life is not a song, sweetling. Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow.
The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer.
If a man paints a target on his chest, he should expect that sooner or later someone will loose an arrow on him.
I stayed sober for this?
Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.
One night, in his cups, he drank a jar of wildfire, after telling his friends it would transform him into a dragon, but the gods were kind and it transformed him into a corpse.
He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death.
The things I do for love.