George on Writing

web.archive.org/web/19970710231523/http://www.omnimag.com/archives/chats/ov112196.html

"Middle earth was magical and wondrous. The =place= was as important as the plot or characters, I believe. It's that way in all great fantasy. I'm trying to make my world, my Seven Kingdoms, as vividly real as JRR did his."

www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Month/1998/10/

"In my case, one of the things I did was go back and reread the Master, J.R.R. Tolkien. Virtually all high fantasy written today, including the work of most of the authors in LEGENDS, in heavily influenced by Tolkien.

Rereading LORD OF THE RINGS, it struck me very forcefully that Tolkien's use of magic is both subtle and sparing. Middle Earth is a world full of wonders, beyond a doubt, but very little magic is actually performed on stage. Gandalf is a wizard, for instance, but he does most of his fighting with a sword.

That seemed to be a much more effective way to go than by having someone mumbling spells every paragraph, so I tried to adapt a similar approach in A GAME OF THRONES."

www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Month/1998/11/

"The Wars of the Roses have always fascinated me, and certainly did influence A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, but there's really no one-for-one character-for-character correspondence. I like to use history to flavor my fantasy, to add texture and versimillitude, but simply rewriting history with the names changed has no appeal for me. I prefer to reimagine it all, and take it in new and unexpected directions."

"And I must confess, I love grey characters, and those who can be interperted in many different ways. Both as a reader and a writer, I want complexity and subtlety in my fiction))"



www.qusoor.com/Essays/Martin.htm

"I think, partially, I wanted to do a book about a family. I’ve written a lot of novels and I realize that for the most part, the heroes of those novels, the protagonists, are always loners. They're young people who are unattached, or they are older people who have never made attachments. Abner Marsh from Fever Dream, is a loner, Dirk Tellarian, in Dying of the Light, is a loner. So I thought it would be interesting to tackle a family unit for once. Also, there's a lot of inspiration in Clash of Kings from history and I read a lot of historical fiction and a lot of history when doing it and was struck by the great family units of the middle ages; power was a familial thing then. That dynamic seemed interesting to me and worth exploring."