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" I have some other novels I want to write. I have a lot of short stories - I love the short story. "

George R. R. Martin

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" I have many books that I want to write; I'd like to think that I'll be around for another 20 years or so and write another dozen novels, probably some sort of imaginative literature... Never again another seven-volume saga. "

George R. R. Martin

" As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen. "

George R. R. Martin

" One of the great things about books is you can afford to do anything. "

George R. R. Martin

" I have always been a dark writer. "

George R. R. Martin

" I've said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense. "

George R. R. Martin

" I worked out of Hollywood for 10 years and I had my heart broken half a dozen times, so I know all the things that can go wrong. "

George R. R. Martin

" I had a couple of friends, but I was mostly the kid with his nose in a book. "

George R. R. Martin

" I believe that a writer learns from every story he writes, and when you try different things, you learn different lessons. Working with other writers, as in Hollywood or in a shared world series, will also strengthen your skills, by exposing you to new ways of seeing the work, and different approaches to certain creative challenges. "

George R. R. Martin

" 'Rome' was one of my favourite shows, and I wish HBO had given it three more seasons 'cause I would have loved to continue watching it. "

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

" The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy. "

George R. R. Martin

" I've been many kinds of writers in my career: novelist; tele-playwright; short story writer. As a high-school student, I wrote amateur pieces for fanzines, and I've written for Hollywood. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

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

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

" There are some examples of medieval kings who were terrible human beings but were nevertheless good kings. "

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

" Boy, there are days where I get up and say 'Where the hell did my talent go? Look at this crap that I'm producing here. This is terrible. Look, I wrote this yesterday. I hate this, I hate this.' "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" 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

" There has to be a level of joy of what you're doing. "

George R. R. Martin

" Whenever I switch from one character to another, there's always a few days where I really struggle because I'm changing voices and I'm changing ways of looking at the world. I'm not just flicking a switch; it's harder process than that. "

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 like grey characters; fantasy for too long has been focused on very stereotypical heroes and villains. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" I was a novelist first. But in the mid-'80s, I did work in television for ten years. And yes, that was frequently the reaction to my scripts. People would say, 'You know, George, this is great. We love it, a terrific script, but it would cost five times our budget to shoot this.' "

George R. R. Martin

" I think in television and film, it's not usually the child's point of view. It's the story of an adult. If there's a child in a drama or an action-adventure movie, they're someone who needs to be saved, someone who needs to be protected, or if they're killed, someone who needs to be avenged. Their character doesn't matter much. "

George R. R. Martin

" I've written some standalone novels, but a book series allows fans in. There's much more intense involvement. "

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 never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead. "

George R. R. Martin