George R. R. Martin Quotes

Any man who has seen the face of death knows better than to seek him out a second time.

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.

I used to think of deathlike I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.

Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

There are two things which Man cannot look at directly without flinching: the sun and death.

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.

We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it.

As one gets older, this question of death, becomes more vexing and urgent.

For many sportsmen, coming face to face with irrefutable evidence of their mortality is the moment they dread above all others.

I'm not a star, man. If a guy came in here and shot you and shot me, we'd both be two dead people. You understand?

I was definitely high-fiving death a couple of times.

Before me now there is only one real fact -- Death. The truth I have been seeking -- this truth is Death. Yet Death is also a seeker. Forever seeking me. So -- we have met at last. And I am prepared. I am at peace. Because I will conquer death with death.

I tried to think about these two issues very freely. With sex, I think I can manage with that. With death, this is a more difficult theme for me. I'm not a believer, even though I'm baptized. I don't practice. I don't believe in God, so I feel very alone facing death. What I discovered is that the only way to recognize death is if you are part of life, if you are part of sexual pleasure, if you link it with sexual pleasure.

When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.

He that shrinks from the grave with too great a dread, has an invisible fear behind him pushing him into it.

Death... The moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

It's not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It's like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death's terror. We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.

But when the dust has drunk the blood of men, no resurrection comes for one who's dead.

We know that death never skips or spares anybody and that no one ever returns. And yet we go on like the blind, who see as little at midday as in the pitch-dark night. We do not take these examples to heart; we do not realize that today or tomorrow our turn will come.

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.

Look out, Death: I am coming.-Art thou not glad? what talks we'll have.-What memories of old battles.-Come, bring the bowl, Death; I am thirsty.

One can no more look steadily at death than at the sun.

I looked death in the eye - and it was a terrible experience.

There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for.