#scenes

Fan:  What is your favorite line in ASOIAF? George: I can’t single out one line but my favorite passage is Septon Meribald’s speech about war in… what was it?  (crowd yells out A Feast for Crows).

- George R.R. Martin, ConCarolinas Q&A (2014)

Interviewer: Do you have a favourite scene where you felt the writing really hit home?  George: I remember there’s a speech that a septon (the Westerosi version of a priest) gives to Brienne about broken men and how they become broken. I was always pretty pleased about writing that.

- George R.R. Martin, The Guardian (2019)

John Hodgman: What is your favorite scene that you have written? George: Boy, my favorite scene… The Red Wedding has to rank up there. It took a lot out of me, it was hard to write, but it's a powerful scene that seems to affect everyone who reads it. But there are other things, sometimes, that I think a writer will respond to and love, that the readers don't necessarily even notice. In one of the later books, there's a scene ("Broken Men" Speech) where Brienne is out searching for Sansa, and she meets this Septon who's traveling around with his dog, and he's asked if there are broken men in the woods. Are they dangerous? Are they the same as bandits? And he gives this fairly lengthy answer about what a broken man is, and how they got broken. I was very pleased with that. It's a monologue, a soliloquy. I think I captured something there, and some of the readers have responded to it. I don't think it's in the show — they probably dropped it, or something like that. But, yeah, that felt good.