Top 500 George R.R. Martin Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “Ideas are cheap. I have more ideas now than I could ever write up. To my mind, it’s the execution that is all-important.”

— George R.R. Martin

152. “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.”

— George R.R. Martin

153. “What are gods for if not to sit in judgment over men? The Many-Faced God does not weigh men’s souls, however. He gives his gift to the best of men as he gives it to the worst. Elsewise the good would live forever.”

— George R.R. Martin

154. “Perhaps that is the secret. It is not what we do, so much as why we do it.”

— George R.R. Martin

155. “Never draw your sword unless you mean to use it.”

— George R.R. Martin

156. “A fair bargain leaves both sides unhappy.”

— George R.R. Martin

157. “In this world, only winter is certain.”

— George R.R. Martin

158. “Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back. Screw Gandalf. He had a great death and the characters should have had to go on without him.”

— George R.R. Martin

159. “Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.”

— George R.R. Martin

160. “In the world as I have seen it, no man grows rich by kindness.”

— George R.R. Martin

161. “Nothing burns like the cold.”

— George R.R. Martin

162. “It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.”

— George R.R. Martin

163. “The Gods give with one hand and take with the other.”

— George R.R. Martin

164. “Sometimes I think everyone is just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending is how you get brave, I don’t know.”

— George R.R. Martin

165. “If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.”

— George R.R. Martin

166. “I swear to you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one.”

— George R.R. Martin

167. “But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy?”

— George R.R. Martin

168. “Black and white and grey, all the shades of truth.”

— George R.R. Martin

169. “I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.”

— George R.R. Martin

170. “So they will not love,” the old man answered, “for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty.”

— George R.R. Martin

171. “When a pirate grows rich enough, they make him a prince.”

— George R.R. Martin

172. “We all need to be mocked from time to time, lest we take ourselves too seriously.”

— George R.R. Martin

173. “The false light can only lead us deeper into darkness.”

— George R.R. Martin

174. “And when you have it, what then? Some secrets are safer kept hidden. Some secrets are too dangerous to share, even with those you love and trust.”

— George R.R. Martin

175. “Better a beggar than a thief.”

— George R.R. Martin

176. “That night the wind was howling almost like a wolf and there were some real wolves off to the west giving it lessons.”

— George R.R. Martin

177. “We’re all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.”

— George R.R. Martin

178. “I’ve lost a hand, a father, a son, a sister, and a lover, and soon enough I will lose a brother. And yet they keep telling me House Lannister won this war.”

— George R.R. Martin

179. “The world is full of cravens who pretended to be heroes.”

— George R.R. Martin

180. “Fire consumes, but cold preserves.”

— George R.R. Martin

181. “I have been despised by better men than you.”

— George R.R. Martin

182. “A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he’ll look you straight in the face.”

— George R.R. Martin

183. “Was there ever a war where only one side bled?”

— George R.R. Martin

184. “You’ll find truth in your looking glass, not on the tongues of men.”

— George R.R. Martin

185. “I have won every battle, yet somehow I’m losing the war.”

— George R.R. Martin

186. “Courage and folly are cousins, or so I’ve heard.”

— George R.R. Martin

187. “A man does not need to be a wizard to know truth from falsehood, not if he has eyes. You need only learn to read a face. Look at the eyes. The mouth. The muscles here, at the corners of the jaw, and here, where the neck joins the shoulders.”

— George R.R. Martin

188. “Reading. That was the sport I was good at.”

— George R.R. Martin

189. “I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon.”

— George R.R. Martin

190. “Sometimes there is no happy choice, Sam, only one less grievous than the others. – Jon Snow.”

— George R.R. Martin

191. “Words are wind, even words like love and peace. I put more trust in deeds.”

— George R.R. Martin

192. “Do you want to know the horrible truth? I can’t even remember what she looked like. I only know she was the one thing I ever wanted. Someone took her away from me, and seven kingdoms couldn’t fill the hole she left behind. -Robert Baratheon.”

— George R.R. Martin

193. “When I am writing best, I really am lost in my world. I lose track of the outside world. I have a difficult time balancing between my real world and the artificial world.”

— George R.R. Martin

194. “Anger was better than tears, better than grief, better than guilt.”

— George R.R. Martin

195. “The gods don’t care about men, no more than kings care about peasants.”

— George R.R. Martin

196. “There is an empty place within me where my heart once was.”

— George R.R. Martin

197. “A sweet face oft hides a sinner’s heart.”

— George R.R. Martin

198. “How much can a crown be worth, when a crow can dine upon a king?”

— George R.R. Martin

199. “A lord must learn that sometimes words can accomplish what swords cannot.”

— George R.R. Martin

200. “Even in dreams, you could not fall forever.”

— George R.R. Martin