George R. R. Martin Quotes

Never in her life – she could swear it from the bottom of her soul – had she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgments had come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently?

A guilty conscience never feels secure.

How was it that he haunted her imagination so persistently? What could it be? Why did she care for what he thought, in spite of all her pride in spite of herself? She believed that she could have borne the sense of Almighty displeasure, because He knew all, and could read her penitence, and hear her cries for help in time to come. But Mr.Thornton-why did she tremble, and hide her face in the pillow? What strong feeling had overtaking her at last?

Guilt is present in the very hesitation, even though the deed be not committed.

I know what I did to you was so wrong, but at the time it also felt so necessary to my survival. I don't know if those two things can both be true, but that's how it was.

I could not stop something I knew was wrong and terrible. I had an awful sense of powerlessness.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Classical tragedy was the war between good and evil. We wanted evil to be defeated and good to be victorious. But the battle in modern tragedy is between good and good. And no matter which side wins, we'll still be heartbroken.

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.

I like devilish, thorny, dirty, mean roles, muck and mire, unbelievably sad, unbelievably happy, burdened. Inner conflict - that's where drama is.

When a good man lends himself to the advocacy of slavery, he must, at least for a time, feel himself to be any where but at home, amongst his new thoughts, doctrines, and modes of reasoning.

There's a lot of reasons you can think of to say why you act, but I can only say that it just felt good. At the same time, it felt really painful. It's still troubling and stressful to me.

I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.

There are people that really live by doing the right thing, but I don't know what that is, I'm really curious about that. I'm really curious about what people think they're doing when they're doing something evil, casually. I think it's really interesting, that we benefit from suffering so much, and we excuse ourselves from it.

It's fun to play a character who lives on the edge, who is an ethical and moral mess, and is paying the price for some of his actions.

The idea that we cause harm by doing what we perceive to be the right thing, that's another theme that interests me. Because most people don't intend to cause harm, they cause harm by doing the right thing - in their mind.

The true knowledge of good and evil arouses disturbances of the mind

If this isn’t good versus evil, what is?

Identify the moral dilemma driving the novel. the successful novel will haunt a reader because it deals with some ethical or moral dilemma that makes the reader wonder what he or she would do in the protagonist's place.

When honor and the Law no longer stand on the same side of the line, how do we choose[?]

My intentions go one way, my desires another. Thus I feel both self-indulgent and deprived.

I tried to walk a line between acting lawfully AND testifying falsely, but I now realize that I did not fully accomplish that goal.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

Even without them touching me, I feel dirty about what I do. Alex does even filthier things but says it all washes off with soap. I don’t believe that. I think it all leaves stains. Indelible stains.

He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.