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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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

Look

Tried

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The success that the Tolkien books had redefined modern fantasy. "

" 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. "

" '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

Writing

Show

" I've never been a fast writer. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I had this desire to see the world. I couldn't see any of it, but I saw it in my imagination, and that's why I always read books, and I could go to Mars or Middle Earth or the Hyborian age. "

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

" 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. "

" 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

Think

Literature

" I'm one of those writers who say, 'I've enjoy having written.' "

" 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! "

" 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. "

" If you're going to write about war, which my books are about, wars are nasty things. I think it's sort of a cheap, easy way out to write a war story in which no one ultimately dies. "

" I love fantasy. I grew up reading fantasy. "

" I prefer to work with grey characters rather than black and white. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" '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

Rome

Seasons

" 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. "

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

" When I am writing best, I really am lost in my world. I lose track of the outside world. I have a difficult time balancing between my real world and the artificial world. "

" 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. "

" I know some writers can write on the road, but I'm not one of them. "

" 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. "