About six months before it came out, I attended a reading, and the scene he read from was *not* in the book, so it must be in the mythical second half.

And I really didn't feel he'd "told all of" any of the characters' stories, since at least Arya and Sansa were left hanging. I don't object to characters not getting to live happily ever after, but I like a sentence or two to tell me we're actually done with their story. So yes, I laughed at he GRRM comment.