George R. R. Martin Quotes

In any genre you're working in, you can always find a way to tell a particular kind of story. I love fantasy; I love science fiction. I love all kinds of fiction, in fact.

Octavia Butler was more interested in writing a good story than in worrying about where to slot it.

I don't look at stories in genres. A good story is a good story, no matter what planet it happens on, whether the characters are mice or human or whatever. That's how I look at it.

The same tools that make any writer good, plus a cheerful willingness to suspend belief.

Sci-fi gives you the scope to do grand stories.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part.

I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.

Basically, I just write whatever story grabs me rather than considering the genre.

I always felt that sci-fi and fantasy were my thing. Bit of a geek, I'm afraid. But I like creating worlds, and I felt it was a genre that gave me more freedom. It just seemed like I belonged there.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.

The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective.

When I write my books, actually, I'm known for very logical rule-based magic systems. I write with one foot in fantasy and one foot in science fiction.

If you set out to write an adjective novel, you're setting out to write a mediocre novel; your allegiance is to the adjective, not to the story, and then that just sucks all the joy right out of it.

I didn't need to write historical epics, no, or science fiction, though I read a lot of science fiction as a kid and rather liked it. But I didn't have the mentality.

I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.

I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books.

My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.

In TV writing, I felt like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There's so much more freedom in fiction writing.

A few people have tried to make me see that my writing isn't quite their thing by saying to me: 'What about realism?' To which my general response is, 'What about it?' However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of my favorite writers, Marilynne Robinson, was to say something similar if asked 'What about the fantastic?'

That certainly is one approach to take. My own is to acknowledge the inner child and try to work with my first fascination with science fiction. I have tried to build on its idea content and narrative drive rather than to discard them.

That's what I always liked about science fiction - you can make the world end. Humour is my multiple warhead delivery system.

I've always been into 'fast-paced, don't bore 'em, keep it moving along, stick with the story.' You know: tell a story the way I want to hear a story. I find it more rewarding to write for kids, but I also find it a little easier, because you can just let loose a little bit more in terms of fantasy and stuff.

I really strived to give equal weight to the two halves of my genre's name: science and fiction.