Quotes from David Benioff

This wasn't the way I had imagined my adventures, but reality ignored my wishes from the get-go, giving me a body best suited for stacking books in the library, injecting so much fear into my veins that I could only cower in the stairwell when the violence came. Maybe someday my arms and legs would thicken with muscle and the fear would drain away like dirty bathwater. I wish I believed these things would happen, but I didn't.

She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. Her mouth was cold, her lips rough from the winter wind, and if the mystics are right and we are doomed to repeat our squalid lives ad infinitum, at least I will always return to that kiss.

And I didn't grow up wanting to be a director. I grew up wanting to be a writer, so for me, that was always the goal - to be a novelist, not a screenwriter. And I think, again, if I didn't have the novels, maybe I'd be much more frustrated by not having directed yet.

Some of my happiest childhood memories are going to the movies with my dad and seeing whatever was out that week. In 1977, when I was 7, it was 'Star Wars.' That was a life-changer.

I was half asleep but I smiled. In spite of all his irritating qualities, I couldn't help liking a man who despised a fictional character with such passion.

They have decided nothing can kill them but God himself, and they don't even believe in him." -- David Benioff; City of Thieves

In the silence of her nonanswer, I considered the possibility that I was a very boring person. Who else but a boring person would utter such meaningless trifles? If a brilliant pig, the prodigy of the barnyard, spent his entire life learning Russian, and on finally becoming proficient the first words he heard were my own, he would wonder why he had wasted his best years when he could have been lolling in the mud, eating slop with the other dumb beasts.

it smelled like jail...sore knees and loose assholes.

Your mother's cunt has a peculiar tubular shape!' he yelled. 'Nonetheless, I tolerate its effluvium and enthusiastically lick its inner folds whenever she demands!

Lev Beniov:] "The imminence of death did not frighten me as much as it should have. I had been too afraid for too long; I was too exhausted, too hungry, too feel anything with proper intensity. But if my fear had diminished, it was not because my courage had increased. My body was so weak, so spent, that my legs trembled from the effort of standing upright. I could summon no great concern for anything, including the fate of Lev Beniov.

The days had become a confusion of catastrophes; what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening.

Don't worry, my friend. I won't let you die." I was seventeen and stupid and I believed him.

Markov's not important,' she said. 'I'm not important. You're not important. Winning the war, that's the only important thing.' 'No,' I said, 'I disagree. Markov was important. So am I and so are you. That's why we have to win.

Stalin goes to visit one of the collectives outside of Moscow," began Kolya in his joke-telling voice. "Wants to see how they're getting on with the latest Five-Year Plan. 'Tell me, comrade,' he asks one farmer. 'How did the potatoes do this year?' 'Very well, Comrade Stalin. If we piled them up, they would reach God.' 'But God does not exist, Comrade Farmer.' 'Nor do the potatoes, Comrade Stalin.

I didn't know if we were heading for the gallows or an interrogation chamber. The night had passed without sleep; save for a swig from the German's flask, there hadn't been a sip to drink since the rooftop of the Kirov; a lump the size of an infant's fist had swelled where my forehead had cracked the ceiling- it was a bad morning, really; among my worst- but I wanted to live.

Es gibt keine gute Nachricht. Nur weil es eine schlechte Nachricht gibt, muss es nicht zwangsläufig gute Nachrichten geben.

fear is part of our inheritance. Lev from "City of Thieves

It made me happy that poems are referred to in the present tense even when the poet is in the past tense.

El sonido más solitario del mundo es el que producen otras personas haciendo el amor.

Siempre he envidiado a las personas que se duermen con facilidad. Sus cerebros deben de estar más limpios, los suelos del cráneo bien barridos, y todos los pequeños monstruos de la mente encerrados en un baúl a los pies de la cama.

I am aware that I am aware

He gave me a small, secretive smile, a smile that said he knew many things but couldn't share them all at once.

What Slattery wants is a ring painted on concrete in the empty desert. With no living spectator around for miles, just him and the grinning demons. A chance to fight them each, one by one . . . to leave them broken and humbled, or even to lose the fights, but with nobility, and earn the respect of all the men who have showed him none. I want peace, he thinks to himself late at night. I want peace. But then he dreams of fistfights.

The front door is usually unlocked and there is no alarm system. They don't wear their seat belts in the car; they don't wear suntan lotion in the sun. They have decided nothing can kill them but God himself, and they don't even believe in him.