George R. R. Martin
George R. R. Martin
George Raymond Richard Martin, often referred to as GRRM, is an American novelist and short-story writer in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres, a screenwriter, and television producer. He is best known for his international bestselling series of epic fantasy novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, which was later adapted into the HBO dramatic series Game of Thrones...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth20 September 1948
CountryUnited States of America
child matter needs point
I think in television and film, it's not usually the child's point of view. It's the story of an adult. If there's a child in a drama or an action-adventure movie, they're someone who needs to be saved, someone who needs to be protected, or if they're killed, someone who needs to be avenged. Their character doesn't matter much.
believe religion
I find religion and spirituality fascinating. I would like to believe this isn't the end and there's something more, but I can't convince the rational part of me that that makes any sense whatsoever.
coming left liked tolkien
I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.
aspect body changed characters death spirit worse
My characters who come back from death are worse for wear. In some ways, they're not even the same characters anymore. The body may be moving, but some aspect of the spirit is changed or transformed, and they've lost something.
tend time
I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.
power
You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn't give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.
nasty sort ultimately war wars
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.
dash fantasy fiction historical history ice song
Over the years, more than one reviewer has described my fantasy series, 'A Song of Ice and Fire', as historical fiction about history that never happened, flavoured with a dash of sorcery and spiced with dragons. I take that as a compliment.
computer files god happens
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!
war struggle fighting
A great many of the epic fantasies, from The Lord of the Rings onward, are about war, but to my mind, a lot of it doesn't really deal honestly with the consequences of war, what war does to us, as a society, what war does to us, as individuals, and the struggle for power, in the same way, and what we're fighting for.
reading hands evil
I love fantasy. I grew up reading fantasy. But, I wanted to put a somewhat different spin on it. The whole trope of absolute good versus absolute evil, which was wonderful in the hands of J.R. Tolkien, became cliche and rote in the hands of the many Tolkien imitators that followed.
book years games
Most people were startled to find out there were books that preceded Game Of Thrones. I'm a case of working forty years to be an overnight success.
mother reading kids
I was just a kid selling monster stories to the kids in the projects, complete with a dramatic reading, making the werewolf sounds. My career was aborted early on because one of my main customers started to have nightmares and his mother came to my mother and my mother shut down my whole business.
book writing numbers
There are a number of things that I'm trying to get into the books. There's a meta-fictional aspect, if I may use that pretentious word, to writing anything. You're writing in the shadow of all the people that have gone before and, in a way, you're having a dialogue with them. As someone who's read J.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard and all the great fantasists before, this is almost my answer to them.