Rolling Stone - "George R.R. Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview"
"Where does your imagination come from?
Ideas are cheap. I have more ideas than I could ever write up. To my mind, it's the execution that is all-important.
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It was the summer of 1991. I was still involved in Hollywood. My agent was trying to get me meetings to pitch my ideas, but I didn't have anything to do in May and June. It had been years since I wrote a novel. I had an idea for a science-fiction novel called Avalon. I started work on it and it was going pretty good, when suddenly it just came to me, this scene, from what would ultimately be the first chapter of A Game of Thrones. It's from Bran's viewpoint; they see a man beheaded and they find some direwolf pups in the snow. It just came to me so strongly and vividly that I knew I had to write it. I sat down to write, and in, like, three days it just came right out of me, almost in the form you've read.
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Modern historians are interested in sociopolitical trends. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in the stories. History is written in blood, a gold mine - the kings, the princess, the generals and the whores, and all the betrayals and wars and confidences. It's better than 90 percent of what the fantasist do make up."
