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All Around Me Darkness Gathers, Fading Is The Sun That Shone, We Must Speak Of Other Matters, You Can Be Me When I'm Gone Flowers Gathered In The Morning, Afternoon They Blossom On, Still Are Withered In The Evening, You Can Be Me When I'm Gone.

-Neil Gaiman

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All Around Me Darkness

Neil Gaiman

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All Around Me Darkness Gathers, Fading Is The Sun That Shone, We Must Speak Of Other Matters, You Can Be Me When I'm Gone Flowers Gathered In The Morning, Afternoon They Blossom On, Still Are Withered In The Evening, You Can Be Me When I'm Gone.

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So, You Figure They Won't Notice You're Back?" Sneered The Marquis. "just, 'oh Look, There's Another Angel, Here, Grab A Harp And On With The Hosannas'?

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I Found English To Be A Sort Of Thomas Hardy Aversion Therapy.

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Nobody's American," Said Wednesday. "not Originally. That's My Point.

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But How Can You Walk Away From Something And Still Come Back To It?" "easy," Said The Cat. "think Of Somebody Walking Around The World. You Start Out Walking Away From Something And End Up Coming Back To It." "small World," Said Coraline. "it's Big Enough For Her," Said The Cat. "spiders' Webs Only Have To Be Large Enough To Catch Flies." Coraline Shivered.

He Left The Drapes Open, Watched The Lights Of The Cars And Of The Fast Food Joints Through The Window Glass, Comforted To Know There Was Another World Out There, One He Could Walk To Anytime He Wanted.

She Had Such Unusual Eyes. They Made Me Think Of The Seaside, And So I Called Her Ocean, And Could Not Have Told You Why.

You Must Never Imagine, That Just Because Something Is Funny, It Is Not Also Dangerous.

Grown-ups Don't Look Like Grown-ups On The Inside Either. Outside, They're Big And Thoughtless And They Always Know What They're Doing. Inside, They Look Just Like They Always Have. Like They Did When They Were Your Age. Truth Is, There Aren't Any Grown-ups. Not One, In The Whole Wide World.

Yes. We Both Have A Bad Feeling. Tonight We Shall Take Our Bad Feelings And Share Them, And Face Them. We Shall Mourn. We Shall Drain The Bitter Dregs Of Mortality. Pain Shared, My Brother, Is Pain Not Doubled, But Halved. No Man Is An Island.

In A Novel, You Can Always Go Back And Make It Look Like You Knew What You Were Doing All Along Before The Thing Goes Out And Gets Published.

Have You Ever Spent Days And Days And Days Making Up Flavors Of Ice Cream That No One's Ever Eaten Before? Like Chicken And Telepone Ice Cream? Green Mouse Ice Cream Was The Worst. I Didn't Like That At All.

I Believe That Anyone Who Says That Sex Is Overrated Just Hasn't Done It Properly.

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None Of Us Exist In A World That Is The Same World That Any Of The Rest Of Us Live In. The World That's Important Is The World Behind Each Of Our Eyes, Which Is Something That None Of The Rest Of Us Can Access.

Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It.

She's Not Dead. You Didn't Kill Her, Nor Did The Hunger Birds, Although They Did Their Best To Get To You Through Her. She's Been Given Her Ocean. One Day, In Its Own Time, The Ocean Will Give Her Back.i Thought Of Corpses And Of Skeletons With Pearls For Eyes. I Thought Of Mermaids With Tails That Flicked When They Moved, Like My Goldfishes' Tails Had Flicked Before My Goldfish Had Stopped Moving, To Lie, Belly Up, Like Lettie, On The Top Of The Water. I Said, 'will She Be The Same?

I Can Believe Things That Are True And Things That Aren't True And I Can Believe Things Where Nobody Knows If They're True Or Not.

Read. Read Anything. Read The Things They Say Are Good For You, And The Things They Claim Are Junk. You'll Find What You Need To Find. Just Read.

I Hope That In This Year To Come, You Make Mistakes. Because If You Are Making Mistakes, Then You Are Making New Things, Trying New Things, Learning, Living, Pushing Yourself, Changing Yourself, Changing Your World. You're Doing Things You've Never Done Before, And More Importantly, You're Doing Something.

Tristan And Yvaine Were Happy Together. Not Forever-after, For Time, The Thief, Eventually Takes All Things Into His Dusty Storehouse, But They Were Happy, As These Things Go, For A Long While

Never A Possession, Always The Possessor, With Skin As Pale As Smoke, And Eyes Tawny And Sharp As Yellow Wine: Desire Is Everything You Have Ever Wanted. Whoever You Are. Whatever You Are. Everything.

It Does Not Matter Where You Come From, If You Walk Toward The Truth You Will Reach It, Whatever Path You Take.

This Is Not A Place, After All. It Is Between Places. This Is Nowhere. A Brief Thought: I Could Stay Here, Abandon My Quest, Hang Forever In The Void, Safe And Cold And Alone.

There Are Three Things, And Three Things Only, That Can Lift The Pain Of Mortality And Ease The Ravages Of Life. These Are Wine, Women And Song.

Dinner With Steven Moffat In Bar Shu, Spent Mostly In Enthusiastic Dr Who Neepery. I Love My Life....as A Side Note, Running Windows Vista On The Panasonic W7 Is Making Me Really Nostalgic For 1986. Whoever Thought I'd Get To Type Things Then Stare At A Blank Screen For A Bit And One-by-one Watch The Letters Appear? Cory And Mike's 'why Don't You Run Linux?' Talks Are Staring To Seem Much More Sensible.

Love Of My Life

Science Is A Way Of Talking About The Universe In Words That Bind It To A Common Reality. Magic Is A Method Of Talking To The Universe In Words That It Cannot Ignore. The Two Are Rarely Compatible.

A World In Which There Are Monsters, And Ghosts, And Things That Want To Steal Your Heart Is A World In Which There Are Angels, And Dreams And A World In Which There Is Hope.

She Took My Hands In Her, Then, And Squeezed Them. 'but You Stayed Where You Were Meant To Be, And You Didn't Listen To Them. Well Done. That's Quality, That Is,' And She Sounded Proud. In That Moment I Forgot My Hunger And I Forgot My Fear.

What Are These Fundamental Principles, If They Are Not Atoms?" "stories. And They Give Me Hope.

Books Make Great Gifts Because They Have Whole Worlds Inside Of Them.

Trees There Were, Old As Trees Can Be, Huge And Grasping With Hearts Black As Sin. Strange Trees That Some Said Walked In The Night.

Bod Was Thrilled. He Imagined A Future In Which He Could Read Everything, In Which All Stories Could Be Opened And Discovered.

Fictions Are Merely Frozen Dreams, Linked Images With Some Semblance Of Structure. They Are Not To Be Trusted, No More Than The People Who Create Them.

Young Man," He Said, "understand This: There Are Two Londons. There's London Above―that's Where You Lived―and Then There's London Below―the Underside―inhabited By The People Who Fell Through The Cracks In The World. Now You're One Of Them. Good Night.

The Imagination Is A Muscle. If It Is Not Exercised, It Atrophies.

The First Author I Remember Being Obsessed By, Actually Realizing 'i Like The Way He Writes And I Like The Way He Tells Stories,' Was C.s. Lewis And The 'narnia' Books.

Go Get Your Heart Broken.

Growing Up, I Took So Many Cues From Books. They Taught Me Most Of What I Knew About What People Did, About How To Behave. They Were My Teachers And My Advisers.

Loyalty Was A Great Thing, But No Lieutenants Should Be Forced To Choose Between Their Leader And A Circus With Elephants.

She Didn't Have A Daddy?" I Asked. "no." "did You Have A Daddy?" "you're All Questions, Aren't You? No, Love. We Never Went In For That Sort Of Thing. You Only Need Men If You Want To Breed More Men.

Nothing I Did Where The Only Reason For Doing It Was The Money Was Ever Worth It, Except As Bitter Experience.

Bitter Experience

For The Record, I Don't Expect You To Believe Any Of This. Not Really. I'm A Liar By Trade, After All; Albeit, I Like To Think, An Honest Liar.

The Problems With Success, Frankly, Are Infinitely Preferable To The Problems Of Failure.

I'm Writing. The Pages Are Starting To Stack Up. My Morale Is Improving The More I Feel Like A Writer.

I Suppose I Could Claim That I Had Suspected That The World Was A Cheap And Shoddy Sham, A Bad Cover For Something Deeper And Weirder And Infinitely More Strange, And That, In Some Way, I Already Know The Truth. But I Think That's Just How The World Has Always Been. And Even Now I Know The Truth, The World Still Seems Cheap And Shoddy. Different World, Different Shoddy, But That's How It Feels.

The Magic Of Comics Is That There Are Three People Involved In Any Comic: There Is Whoever Is Writing It, And Whoever Is Drawing It, And Then There's Whoever Is Reading It, Because The Really Important Things In Comics Are Occurring In The Panel Gutters, They're Occurring Between Panels As The Person Reading The Comics Is Moving You Through, Is Creating A Film In Their Heads.

Books Are Special, Books Are The Way We Talk To Generations That Have Not Turned Up Yet. The Fact That We Can Actually, Essentially Communicate With The People In Ancient Egypt, People In Rome And Greece, People In Ancient Britain, People In New York In The 1920s Who Can Communicate To Us And Change The Way We Think, And Change The Things That We Believe. I Think That Books Are Special. Books Are Sacred. And I Think That When You Are Selling Books, You Have To Remember That In All The Profits And Loss, In All Of That, You Are Treading On Sacred Ground.

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Short Stories Are Tiny Windows Into Other Worlds And Other Minds And Other Dreams

You Shone Like A Star. The Funniest, Wisest Writer & The Finest Friend

Because There Are Mysteries. Because There Are Things That People Are Forbidden To Speak About. Because There Are Things They Do Not Remember.

Sometimes The Way To Do What You Hope To Do Will Be Clear Cut, And Sometimes It Will Be Almost Impossible To Decide Whether Or Not You Are Doing The Correct Thing, Because You'll Have To Balance Your Goals And Hopes With Feeding Yourself, Paying Debts, Finding Work, Settling For What You Can Get.

I Lay On The Bed And Lost Myself In Stories. I Liked That. Books Were Safer Than Other People Anyways.

So The Day Became One Of Waiting, Which Was, He Knew, A Sin: Moments Were To Be Experienced; Waiting Was A Sin Against Both The Time That Was Still To Come And The Moments One Was Currently Disregarding.

What I Say Is, A Town Isn't A Town Without A Bookstore. It May Call Itself A Town, But Unless It's Got A Bookstore It Knows It's Not Fooling A Soul.

Then One Stupid Person, No Different From Any Other Stupid Person, Wanders Into Your Stupid Life... You Give Them A Piece Of You. They Don't Ask For It. They Do Something Dumb One Day, Like Kiss You Or Smile At You, And Then Your Life Isn't Your Own Anymore.

Pain Shared, My Brother, Is Pain Not Doubled But Halved. No Man Is An Island

There's A Glorious Sense Of Freedom In Comedy, Just Allowing Myself To Tell Jokes, Allowing Myself To Interrupt Myself And Tell Old African Folk Stories That I Made Up - Or Didn't - And Jamaican Stories.

Any Way, Death Is So Final, Isn't It? "is It?" Asked Richard. "sometimes," Said The Marquis De Carabas. And They Went Down.

His Name Is Marcus: He Is Four And A Half And Possesses That Deep Gravity And Seriousness That Only Small Children And Mountain Gorillas Have Ever Been Able To Master.

I Watched My Life As If It Were Happening To Someone Else. My Son Died. And I Was Hurt, But I Watched My Hurt, And Even Relished It, A Little, For Now I Could Write A Real Death, A True Loss. My Heart Was Broken By My Dark Lady, And I Wept, In My Room, Alone; But While I Wept, Somewhere Inside I Smiled.

Nobody Will Ever Hurt Her. She’ll Just Smile Her Faint Vague Wonderful Smile And Walk Away.

I Was Not Scared Of Anything, When I Read My Book.

Don't Worry About Trying To Develop A Style. Style Is What You Can't Help Doing. If You Write Enough, You Draw Enough, You'll Have A Style, Whether You Want It Or Not. Don't Worry About Whether You're "commercial". Tell Your Own Stories, Draw Your Own Pictures. Let Other People Follow You.

I'd Love To Think That People In The Future Would Gather In Theatres, At Conventions, And In Darkened Rooms, And Read It Out To Each Other.

My Bed Was Pushed Up Hard Against The Wall Just Below The Window. I Loved To Sleep With The Windows Open. Rainy Nights Were The Best Of All: I Would Open My Windows And Put My Head On My Pillow And Close My Eyes And Feel The Wind On My Face And Listen To The Trees Sway And Creak. There Would Be Raindrops Blown Onto My Face, Too, If I Was Lucky, And I Would Imagine That I Was In My Boat On The Ocean And That It Was Swaying With The Swell Of The Sea. I Did Not Imagine That I Was A Pirate, Or That I Was Going Anywhere. I Was Just On My Boat.

There Was A Hysteria In There, Certainly, But There Was Also The Exhaustion Of Someone Who Had Managed, Somehow, To Believe Several Dozen Impossible Things In The Last Twenty-four Hours, Without Ever Getting A Proper Breakfast.

Impossible Things

I Don't Believe In "writer's Block". I Try And Deal With Getting Stuck By Having More Than One Thing To Work On At A Time. And By Knowing That Even A Hundred Bad Words That Didn't Exist Before Is Forward Progress.

I Was One Of Those Kids Who Had Books On Them. Before Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Funerals And Anything Else Where You're Actually Meant To Not Be Reading, My Family Would Frisk Me And Take The Book Away. If They Didn't Find It By This Point In The Procedure, I Would Be Sitting Over In That Corner Completely Unnoticed Just Reading My Book.

Discontent Is A Good Thing: Discontented People Can Modify And Improve Their Worlds, Leave Them Better, Leave Them Different.

Often The Adult Book Is Not For You, Not Yet, Or Will Only Be For You When You're Ready. But Sometimes You Will Read It Anyway, And You Will Take From It Whatever You Can. Then, Perhaps, You Will Come Back To It When You're Older, And You Will Find The Book Has Changed Because You Have Changed As Well, And The Book Is Wiser, Or More Foolish, Because You Are Wiser Or More Foolish Than You Were As A Child.

Make Your Mistakes, Next Year And Forever.

It Is A Fool's Prerogative To Utter Truths That No One Else Will Speak.

When Things Get Tough... Make Good Art.

When Things Get Tough

There Are Some Dogs Which, When You Meet Them, Remind You That, Despite Thousands Of Years Of Manmade Evolution, Every Dog Is Still Only Two Meals Away From Being A Wolf.

When Things Get Tough, This Is What You Should Do: Make Good Art. I'm Serious. Husband Runs Off With A Politician -- Make Good Art. Leg Crushed And Then Eaten By A Mutated Boa Constrictor -- Make Good Art. Irs On Your Trail -- Make Good Art. Cat Exploded -- Make Good Art. Someone On The Internet Thinks What You're Doing Is Stupid Or Evil Or It's All Been Done Before -- Make Good Art.

None Of This Is Truly Happening," He Said To Shadow. He Sounded Miserable. "it's All In Your Head. Best Not To Think Of It.

It Goes Without Saying That All Of The People, Living, Dead, And Otherwise, In This Story Are Fictional Or Used In A Fictional Context. Only The Gods Are Real.

What About Volcanoes?" "what About Them?" "all That Lava Comes Up From Center Of The Earth Where It Is All Hot. I Saw A Program, It Had David Attenborough, So It's True.

We Do Not Always Remember The Things That Do No Credit To Us. We Justify Them, Cover Them In Bright Lies Or With The Thick Dust Of Forgetfulness.

I'm Bored," She Said. "learn How To Tap-dance," He Suggested, Without Turning Around.

Freedom Of Speech Gives You The Right To Stay Silent.

Freedom Of Speech

The Ducks In St James's Park Are So Used To Being Fed Bread By Secret Agents Meeting Clandestinely That They Have Developed Their Own Pavlovian Reaction. Put A St James's Park Duck In A Laboratory Cage And Show It A Picture Of Two Men -- One Usually Wearing A Coat With A Fur Collar, The Other Something Sombre With A Scarf -- And It'll Look Up Expectantly.

Gods Die. And When They Truly Die They Are Unmourned And Unremembered. Ideas Are More Difficult To Kill Than People, But They Can Be Killed, In The End.

Life Is Sometimes Hard. Things Go Wrong, In Life And In Love And In Business And In Friendship And In Health And In All Other Ways That Life Can Go Wrong. And When Things Get Tough, This Is What You Should Do. Make Good Art.

The World Is Always Ending For Someone. It’s A Good Line. I Give It To The Father Of The Child. He Says It To His Wife. ‘the World Is Always Ending For Someone,’ He Says. She Is Trying To Quieten The Baby, And Does Not Hear Him. I Doubt That It Would Matter If She Did.

Oh, Monsters Are Scared. That's Why They're Monsters.

You Don't Get Explanations In Real Life. You Just Get Moments That Are Absolutely, Utterly, Inexplicably Odd.

And There Never Was An Apple, In Adam's Opinion, That Wasn't Worth The Trouble You Got Into For Eating It.

It's One Thing To Want Money, But If You Find Yourself Choking On A Coin As You Wake, The Money Is Slightly Less Desirable.

Finding Yourself

She Was Also An Adult, And When Adults Fight Children, Adults Always Win.

You Don't Pass Or Fail At Being A Person, Dear.

A God's Relationship To The World, Even A World In Which He Was Walking, Was About As Emotionally Connected As That Of A Computer Gamer Playing With Knowledge Of The Overall Shape Of The Game And Armed With A Complete Set Of Cheat Codes.

Some Hats Can Only Be Worn If You're Willing To Be Jaunty, To Set Them At An Angle And To Walk Beneath Them With A Spring In Your Stride As If You're Only A Step Away From Dancing. They Demand A Lot Of You.

I Really Like Being Able To Laugh At My Own Jokes.

The Young Man Shivered. He Rolled The Stock Themes Of Fantasy Over In His Mind: Cars And Stockbrokers And Commuters, Housewives And Police, Agony Columns And Commercials For Soap, Income Tax And Cheap Restaurants, Magazines And Credit Cards And Streetlights And Computers... 'it Is Escapism, True,' He Said, Aloud. 'but Is Not The Highest Impulse In Mankind The Urge Toward Freedom, The Drive To Escape?

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