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" I had a couple of friends, but I was mostly the kid with his nose in a book. "
George R. R. Martin
Book
Had
Friends
Related Quotes:
" Nothing bores me more than books where you read two pages and you know exactly how it's going to come out. I want twists and turns that surprise me, characters that have a difficult time and that I don't know if they're going to live or die. "
George R. R. Martin
You
Know
Live
" Unfortunately in television, for whatever reason, fantasy became thought of as a kids' genre. "
George R. R. Martin
Thought
Fantasy
Reason
" I spent a whole summer working on what proved to be 'A Game of Thrones'. "
George R. R. Martin
Whole
Spent
Game
" I have files, I have computer files and, you know, files on paper. But most of it is really in my head. So God help me if anything ever happens to my head! "
George R. R. Martin
God
Help
Head
" I knew that, when writing a book, you're not constrained by a budget. You're not constrained by what you can do, in terms of the special effects technology. You're not limited to any particular running time. "
George R. R. Martin
Technology
Writing
You
" My characters who come back from death are worse for wear. In some ways, they're not even the same characters anymore. The body may be moving, but some aspect of the spirit is changed or transformed, and they've lost something. "
George R. R. Martin
Death
Moving
Body
" As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy. "
George R. R. Martin
Hate
Character
Great
" If I was a soldier going to war, I'd be pretty scared the night before a battle. It's a scary thing. And I want my readers to feel that fear as they turn the page. "
George R. R. Martin
Page
War
Battle
" A lot of writing takes place in the subconscious, and it's bound to have an effect. "
George R. R. Martin
Place
Effect
Subconscious
" You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn't give you the power to reform, or improve, or build. "
George R. R. Martin
Build
Destroy
Improve
" An awful lot of fantasy, and even some great fantasy, falls into the mistake of assuming that a good man will be a good king, that all that is necessary is to be a decent human being and when you're king everything will go swimmingly. "
George R. R. Martin
Good
You
Mistake
" I work for two years on a book and it comes out and two days later I've got my first e-mail: When is the next one coming out? "
George R. R. Martin
Days
Book
First
" Over the years, more than one reviewer has described my fantasy series, 'A Song of Ice and Fire', as historical fiction about history that never happened, flavoured with a dash of sorcery and spiced with dragons. I take that as a compliment. "
George R. R. Martin
History
Fantasy
Compliment
" I grew up with four T.V. channels. If you missed a show, you missed it. You gotta wait a week for the next one. I'd mail-order books: take a quarter, get an envelope, send off for it and wait until it arrived. I grew up waiting for things. "
George R. R. Martin
You
Waiting
Week
" There is magic in my universe, but it's pretty low magic compared to other fantasies. "
George R. R. Martin
Pretty
Universe
Magic
" Start with short stories. After all, if you were taking up rock climbing, you wouldn't start with Mount Everest. So if you're starting fantasy, don't start with a nine-book series. "
George R. R. Martin
Short
Up
You
" With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I'm all of the actors and I'm the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I'm all of that. So if it's good or bad, it's all up to me. "
George R. R. Martin
Bad
Book
Good
" I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time. "
George R. R. Martin
Tend
Write
Character
" When the writing is going really well, whole days and weeks go by, and I suddenly realise I have all these unpaid bills and, my God, I haven't unpacked, and the suitcase has been sitting there for three weeks. "
George R. R. Martin
Sitting
Days
God
" 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
Science
People
Mystery
" 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. "
George R. R. Martin
Heart
Conflict
Always
" The vast majority of writers out there, they finish their books, and no one cares whether their book is late or ever comes out at all. And then it comes out, and two reviews are published, and it sells 12 copies. "
George R. R. Martin
Late
Finish
Books
" There has to be a level of joy of what you're doing. "
George R. R. Martin
Joy
You
Level
" I know some writers can write on the road, but I'm not one of them. "
George R. R. Martin
Write
Writers
Know
" There are some examples of medieval kings who were terrible human beings but were nevertheless good kings. "
George R. R. Martin
Terrible
Who
Good
" I have always been a dark writer. "
George R. R. Martin
Dark
Always
Been
" There was part of me that wanted to see the world and travel to distant places, but I could only do it in my imagination, so I read ferociously and imagined things. "
George R. R. Martin
Imagination
World
Travel
" Don't write outlines; I hate outlines. "
George R. R. Martin
Hate
Write
Outlines
" One of the big breakthroughs, I think for me, was reading Robert A. Heinlein's four rules of writing, one of which was, 'You must finish what you write.' I never had any problem with the first one, 'You must write' - I was writing since I was a kid. But I never finished what writing. "
George R. R. Martin
Problem
Writing
Think
" I find religion and spirituality fascinating. I would like to believe this isn't the end and there's something more, but I can't convince the rational part of me that that makes any sense whatsoever. "
George R. R. Martin
End
More
Believe