“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. 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. They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.”
—George R. R. Martin
An interesting excerpt from an interview with Elio Garcia of Westoros.org:
Garcia now performs this function for all the books, but it’s completely unofficial: “It’s not like I’m paid or anything.” And yes, that means he’s read parts of book six, The Winds of Winter — including a Sansa chapter that is sure to be controversial.
We’ve known that Martin has had a Sansa chapter completed for some time now, but we’ve never had any description of the chapter. It’s very brief, but “sure to be controversial” is quite the phrasing.
“Judging by the reaction that Ned's death got when the television audience saw that, I think I'm going to go to some part of the world where they have no television when a certain episode airs, and I'll hide out and they won't find me at all. I'll have to hide from the Internet storm as well.”
—- George R. R. Martin on the Red Wedding airing on TV
