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" 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

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

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" I wrote six pilots, none of which ever got picked up. When you stop trying, it then it falls in your lap. "

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" Writing is hard. I mean, I sit there and work at it. "

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" I have an instinctual distrust of conventional happy endings. "

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" I wanted to write a big novel, something epic in scale. "

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" Whether you're a history buff or a fantasy fan, Druon's epic will keep you turning pages. This was the original game of thrones. If you like 'A Song of Ice and Fire', you will love 'The Accursed Kings'. "

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" 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

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

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

" 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

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

George R. R. Martin

Black And White

" 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

" 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

" There is magic in my universe, but it's pretty low magic compared to other fantasies. "

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

" It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

George R. R. Martin

" 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

" I watch NFL football on Sundays. I enjoy gaming with friends, meaning role-playing games; I still enjoy going to conventions and traveling. "

George R. R. Martin

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

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