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This book was dictated to Benoni B. Gattell at intervals between the years 1912 and 1932. Since then it has been worked over again and again. Now, in 1946, there are few pages that have not been at least slightly changed.
--
Author's Forward, p. xxi

 

Harold W. Percival

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Back at the Philadelphia Worldcon (which seems a million years ago), I announced the famous five-year gap: I was going to skip five years forward in the story, to allow some of the younger characters to grow older and the dragons to grow larger, and for various other reasons. I started out writing on that basis in 2001, and it worked very well for some of my myriad characters but not at all for others, because you can't just have nothing happen for five years. If things do happen you have to write flashbacks, a lot of internal retrospection, and that's not a good way to present it. I struggled with that essentially wrong direction for about a year before finally throwing it out, realizing there had to be another interim book. That became A Feast for Crows, where the action is pretty much continuous from the preceding book. Even so, that only accounts for one year. Why the four after that? I don't know, except that this was a very tough book to write -- and it remains so, because I've only finished half. Going in, I thought I could do something about the length of the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, roughly 1,200 pages in manuscript. But I passed that and there was a lot more to write. Then I passed the length of the third book, A Storm of Swords, which was something like 1,500 pages in manuscript and gave my publishers all around the world lots of production problems. I didn't really want to make any cuts because I had this huge story to tell. We started thinking about dividing it in two and doing it as A Feast for Crows, Parts One and Two, but the more I thought about that the more I really did not like it. Part One would have had no resolution whatsoever for 18 viewpoint characters and their 18 stories. Of course this is all part of a huge megaseries so there is not a complete resolution yet in any of the volumes, but I try to give a certain sense of completion at the end of each volume -- that a movement of the symphony has wrapped up, so to speak.

 

George R. R. Martin

 

Book #10: A Book of Travellers' Tales. As it hits the water its pages detach themselves from the covers, which sink... and the pages form themselves into small paper boats that float away on the tide.

 

Peter Greenaway

 

Let’s just grant the possibility that there is a creator god, who’s omniscient, who occasionally authors books. And he’s gonna give us a book - the most useful book. He’s a loving god, he’s a compassionate god, and he’s gonna give us a guide to life. He’s got a scribe, the scribe’s gonna write it down. What’s gonna be in that book? I mean just think of how good a book would be if it were authored by an omniscient deity. I mean, there is not a single line in the bible or the koran that could not have been authored by a first century person. There is not one reference to anything - there are pages and pages about how to sacrifice animals, and keep slaves, and who to kill and why. There’s nothing about electricity, there’s nothing about DNA, there’s nothing about infectious disease, the principles of infectious disease. There’s nothing particularly useful, and there’s a lot of iron age barbarism in there, and superstition. This is not a candidate book.

 

Sam Harris

 

I was never concerned with statistics - scoring goals, my records. The only thing I was concerned about was winning. The association changed my life. It changed my career and it changed my stats. I went to Chicago for three years but I was never a Blackhawk. I was treated well by the fans and by management, but I only had mediocre years. I still had a Red Wing on my forehead, on my backside and over my heart. I was existing, nothing more. Then, I retired for four years.

 

Ted Lindsay

 

I read it for the first time in about 20 years this year–-recently. It wasn't so bad. I get it. I get fan mail now from people who weren't really born yet when the book came out. I don't think it's a perfect book by any means, but it's valid. I get where it comes from. I get what it is. I know that sounds so ambiguous. It's sort of out of my hands and it has its reputation so what can you do about it? There's a lot of it that I wish was slightly more elegantly written. Overall, I was pretty shocked. It was pretty good writing for someone who was 19. I was pretty surprised by the level of writing.

 

Bret Easton Ellis