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" 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

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" 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

" Yes - 90% of fantasy is crap. And so is 90% of science fiction and 90% of mystery fiction and 90% of literary fiction. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" The cable makers are the ones who are willing to take risks and do something original and push the envelope some. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" I have always been a dark writer. "

George R. R. Martin

" I had an encyclopedia with a list of flags in the back, so I would look at all these flags of China and Liberia and England and Denmark and whatever, and I learned all the different flags, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be voyaging on some of these ships. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" Of course it's not enough to be a good man to be an effective ruler and it never has been. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" 'Dreamsongs' allows me to show the scope of my writing - with personal commentary that puts the works in context and includes some autobiographical details intended to reveal how each piece came to be, what it represents, and how it has formed, or been informed by, my philosophy of writing. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" I suppose I'm a lapsed Catholic. You would consider me an atheist or agnostic. "

George R. R. Martin

" A lot of writing takes place in the subconscious, and it's bound to have an effect. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" If you go all the way back, I've always written science-fiction, I've always written fantasy, I've always written horror stories and monster stories, right from the beginning of my career. I've always moved back and forth between the genres. I don't really recognise that there's a significant difference between them in some senses. "

George R. R. Martin

" Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories. "

George R. R. Martin

" I don't know if I have any particular views about women in positions of power, though I do think it's more difficult for women, particularly in a Medieval setting. They have the additional problem that they're a woman and people don't want them in a position of power in an essentially patriarchal society. "

George R. R. Martin

" I think that, in all of my time, I got just one fan letter, from an NFL fullback named Darian Barnes. NFL players might not have enough time for my books. "

George R. R. Martin

" All fiction has to have a certain amount of truth in it to be powerful. "

George R. R. Martin

" I try to make the readers feel they've lived the events of the book. Just as you grieve if a friend is killed, you should grieve if a fictional character is killed. You should care. If somebody dies and you just go get more popcorn, it's a superficial experience isn't it? "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" 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

" I have always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth. "

George R. R. Martin

" You always try to do your own thing. One of the things I wanted to do was to write a book that combines some of the best traits of contemporary fantasy with some of the traits of the historical novel. "

George R. R. Martin

" Many writers will get a contract by selling chapters and outlines or something like that. I wrote the entire novel, and when it was all finished, I would give it to my agent and say, 'Well, here's a novel; sell it if you can.' And they would do that, and it was good because I never had anyone looking over my shoulder. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" One of the things I love, and I'm a voracious reader as well as a writer, is books that surprise me, that are not predictable. "

George R. R. Martin