One of the great things about books is you can afford to do anything.
George R. R. MartinRead
When you have known the kiss of a flaying knife, a laugh loses all its power to hurt you.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Experiencing deep pain diminishes the impact of lesser hurts.
This quote suggests that enduring significant suffering can make other, lesser forms of pain seem trivial in comparison. Once one has gone through a profound challenge or trauma, they become more resilient, gaining a perspective that allows them to laugh off smaller insults or frustrations that might otherwise sting.
Themes
PainResilienceSufferingStrengthLaughter
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
More from George R. R. Martin
All quotes →I hate outlines. I have a broad sense of where the story is going; I know the end, I know the end of the principal characters, and I know the major turning points and events from the books, the climaxes for each book, but I don't necessarily know each twist and turn along the way. That's something I discover in the course of writing and that's what makes writing enjoyable. I think if I outlined comprehensively and stuck to the outline the actual writing would be boring.
George R. R. MartinRead
There is only one god and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: “Not today.
George R. R. MartinRead
I did not do it. Yet now I wish I had.’ He turned to face the hall, that sea of pale faces. ‘I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here.
George R. R. MartinRead
But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. 'Life is not a song, sweetling,' he'd told her, 'You may learn that one day to your sorrow.' In life, the monsters win, she told herself.
George R. R. MartinRead
I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.
George R. R. MartinRead
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A lot of people go off and have fun adventures, or hard adventures, and their impulse is to write about them right away. What really makes a difference is having some perspective on what happened.
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I'm not patient - and I'm getting more impatient as I get older - but I am disciplined about writing, and I want that on my tombstone: 'He wasn't patient, but he was disciplined.'
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