George R. R. Martin Quotes

The world that birthed that story is long gone, all its people are dead, but it continues to touch the present and future because someone cared enough about that world to keep it. To put it in words. To remember it.

It's good to pass on stories.

Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories ar for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.

We're trying to let people see what their grandfather told them about.

But a man is not forgotten, as long as there are two people left under the sky. One, to tell the story; the other, to hear it.

My grandmother told stories; she was very good at that.

Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living.

History takes time... History makes memory.

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.

Literature is the memory of humanity.

The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.

Death steals everything except our stories.

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.

We're dead as a species if we don't tell stories, because then we don't know who we are.

We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on.

Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist as a people.

My background is deep and set in deep time, and in a narrow space, oral traditions going back a long, long time, which I inherited by osmosis.

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.

I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.

I've always been aware that to be named after someone from the past carries with it all kinds of bittersweetness.

Stories always seem to get better with age.

In some sense, I'm a romantic. I like the idea of organic history and tradition.

Soon, nostalgia will be another name for Europe.

The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority.