Will Martin
Will Martin
Will Martinis a New Zealand-born classical crossover singer...
art people democracy
Art is not a democracy. People don't get to vote on how it ends.
queens kings protect
Why do the Gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?
country baby book
Names are hard. I have a library of What to Name Your Baby books, and I’m always picking up new books, and books of baby names from other countries. I like cool-sounding names.
names looks use
A lot of fantasy names are too much. They’re too difficult to pronounce. I wanted the flavour of medieval England. I took actual names we still use today, like ‘Robert’, and in some case I tweaked them a little bit. I made ‘Edward’ into ‘Eddard’. If you look back at medieval times, no one knew how to spell their own names. There are a lot of variations that we’ve lost.
cutting men wizards
Wizards die the same as other men, once you cut their heads off.
work-out long trying
Start trying to work out who deserves what, and before long you'll spend the rest of your days weeping for each and every person in the world.
book wish littles
That little touch is not in the books, but I wish it had been in the books because it was a great addition.
dream children character
The truth of it is, writers do have peculiar relationships with their characters. They are our children in more senses than one. They are born of our imaginations, carry much of ourselves in them, and embody whatever dreams we dream of immortality.
beauty truth-is instruments
We know truth for the cruel instrument it is. Beauty is infinitely preferable to truth.
children night forever
There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
hero book two
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.
leadership wise kings
Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple...Real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with.... My people who are trying to rule don't have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise king.
kings wall growing-up
Jon Snow had dreamed of leading men to glory just as King Daeron had, of growing up to be a conqueror. Now he was a man grown and the Wall was his, yet all he had were doubts. He could not even seem to conquer those.
children thinking looks
Sometimes I think some of my fellow novelists who have not worked in television and film are very naive about this process. They get an offer and there's the dump truck full of money and they sign it, they cash the check and then they're not involved in the series. They may get invited to the premiere and they come out of the premiere looking like all of their children had just been gassed, with a stunned look on their face because everything has been changed.