George R. R. Martin Quotes

The real issue lies in the North beyond the Wall. Stannis becomes one of the few characters fully to understand that, which is why in spite of everything he is a righteous man.

But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

I was raised on the streets, in hot, steamy Brooklyn, with stifled air.

There's a difference between someone who's 'harsh' and someone who is 'hard.' Life was hard. You lived in the South, as my grandparents did, and you had to survive. That is hard. In order to respond to that, he had to become a hard man, with very hard rules, very hard discipline for himself, very hard days, hard work, et cetera.

It's often difficult to slough off all that we've acquired, all the comforts and safety nets modern life provides for us, and realize that in those days, people were living very much on the edge - life was incredibly hard!

Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven.

We lived in the bowels of New York City. It was a struggle just to survive. This nice suburban kid hadn't had to do much of that before.

We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death... The marvel is we did not all die of cold.

By and large, prisons are survivable, though hope is indeed what you need least upon entering here; a lump of sugar would be more useful.

It's the way of life in Saginaw. If you're not tough, you don't survive.

Basic training is horrible. It's dirty, and it's ugly. But you learn it's not just about you. It makes you part of a team, which helps you to survive.

I do what I've got to do to survive, to keep my teeth in my head, and my head on my shoulders. I apologize to whoever can't put that together and understand that.

I don't believe watching dreams but like to stick to reality. Reality is all about flood, hunger, illness.

Morality and religion are but words to him who fishes in gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter night.

Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods

It is bad to be poor. I shall go to the wall for bread and meat, if I neglect my business this year as well as last.

Life is parallel to Hell but I must maintain and be prosperous, though we live dangerous.

The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho' it is vast and empty and untouchable... and knows no kindness with all its beauty.

Now I understand why King Stannis let the wildlings through the Wall. He means for us to eat them.

Nothing could have survived our life.

Wisdom is probably the ability to cope. That's why someone who has to walk seven miles every day to get water for their children can be wiser than someone sitting behind a desk in Wall Street.

Life there was hard and it made people hard.

Ooh baby, baby, it's a wild world, it's hard just to get by upon a smile.