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And Weren't, When You Got Right Down To It, Particularly Evil. Human Beings Mostly Aren't. They Just Get Carried Away By New Ideas, Like Dressing Up In Jackboots And Shooting People, Or Dressing Up In White Sheets And Lynching People, Or Dressing Up In Tie-dye Jeans And And Playing Guitar At People. Offer People A New Creed With A Costume And Their Hearts And Minds Will Follow.

-Neil Gaiman

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And Weren't, When You

Neil Gaiman

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And Weren't, When You Got Right Down To It, Particularly Evil. Human Beings Mostly Aren't. They Just Get Carried Away By New Ideas, Like Dressing Up In Jackboots And Shooting People, Or Dressing Up In White Sheets And Lynching People, Or Dressing Up In Tie-dye Jeans And And Playing Guitar At People. Offer People A New Creed With A Costume And Their Hearts And Minds Will Follow.

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Repeat After Me, There Are The Living And The Dead, There Are Day-folk And Night-folk, There Are Ghouls And Mist-walkers, There Are High Hunters And The Hounds Of God. Also, There Are Solitary Types." "what Are You?" Asked Bod. "i," She Said Sternly, "am Miss Lupescu." "and What Is Silas?" She Hesitated. Then She Said, "he Is A Solitary Type.

It Always Felt Like The Price Of Being A Writer Was That You Would - Even In The Most Terrible Moments, There Was A Little Phantom Version Of You Sitting On Your Shoulder With A Notebook Going, I Can Use This. Ok, Look At The Way That The Light Is Glinting Off The Broken Plastic On The Road Next To The Blood. You Can Use This. And It Was Always A Very Strange Feeling.

And Did I Pass?" The Face Of The Old Woman On My Right Was Unreadable In The Gathering Dusk. On My Left The Younger Woman Said, "you Don't Pass Or Fail At Being A Person, Dear.

Picking One Of Your Favorite Creation Or Character Is Like Picking The Best One Of Your Children! I'm Not Sure It Really Works. My Very Favorite Characters Tend To Be Ones I Can Go Back To And Look At, And Have No Idea How They Popped Out Of My Head.

It’s A New Year And With It Comes A Fresh Opportunity To Shape Our World. So This Is My Wish, A Wish For Me As Much As It Is A Wish For You: In The World To Come, Let Us Be Brave – Let Us Walk Into The Dark Without Fear, And Step Into The Unknown With Smiles On Our Faces, Even If We’re Faking Them. And Whatever Happens To Us, Whatever We Make, Whatever We Learn, Let Us Take Joy In It. We Can Find Joy In The World If It’s Joy We’re Looking For, We Can Take Joy In The Act Of Creation. So That Is My Wish For You, And For Me. Bravery And Joy.

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.

I Like Comic Conventions. I Genuinely Like Comic Conventions. I Like Wandering Around From Table To Table; I Like Wandering Up And Down Artist's Alley And Saying "hello" To People. I Like Hanging Out On The Dc Booth. I Can't Do That Anymore. I'd Like To, But I Can't. I Physically Can't. If I Stop Moving, Somebody Will Come Up To Me With Something To Sign, And If I Sign It, Somehow It's Like Ants Sensing Sugar. There Will Be Fifty Or A Hundred People Around Me And Then Fire Marshals Will Come And Then I'm Trapped In A Crowd. It's Bizarre.

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.

Librarians Are The Coolest People Out There Doing The Hardest Job Out There On The Frontlines. And Every Time I Get To Encounter Or Work With Librarians, I'm Always Impressed By Their Sheer Awesomeness.

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That Is The Eternal Folly Of Man. To Be Chasing After The Sweet Flesh, Without Realizing That It Is Simply A Pretty Cover For The Bones.

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Everything Has To Be Intrinsic Plot-wise In The Same Way, To Use The Linda Williams Analogy But To Move It On A Bit, As Musicals - In Old Musicals, Like In An Old Cole Porter Musical, You Get The Action, Then They Do A Song, Which Reflects A Moment - Everything Stops While That Is Being Sung - And Then You Restart. These Days In Most Musicals, The Plot Keeps Moving Through The Song. I Think It Would Be Nice If Someone Constructed Some Pornography Where The Sex Continues To Propel You Through The Story.

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The Only Water In The Forest Is The River.

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Thought Provoking

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You Don't Have To Test Everything To Destruction Just To See If You Made It Right.

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May Your Coming Year Be Filled With Magic And Dreams And Good Madness.

I Believe That Life Is A Game, That Life Is A Cruel Joke, And That Life Is What Happens When You're Alive And That You Might As Well Lie Back And Enjoy It.

We Owe It To Each Other To Tell Stories.

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You See, The Outcome Of The Battle Is Unimportant. What Matters Is The Chaos, And The Slaughter.

Dreams Shape The World

The Search For The Word Gets No Easier But Nobody Else Is Going To Write Your Novel For You.

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As Far As I'm Concerned, The Entire Reason For Becoming A Writer Is Not Having To Get Up In The Morning.

It Doesn't Matter That I Can't Remember The Details Any Longer: Death Happened To Her. Death Happens To All Of Us.

To Absent Friends, Lost Loves, Old Gods, And The Season Of Mists; And May Each And Every One Of Us Always Give The Devil His Due.

Eyes As Black And As Shiny As Chips Of Obsidian Stared Back Into His. They Were Eyes Like Black Holes, Letting Nothing Out, Not Even Information.

I Wondered If That Was True: If They Were All Really Children Wrapped Up In Adult Bodies, Like Children's Books Hidden In The Middle Of Dull, Long Adult Books, The Kind With No Pictures Or Conversations.

You Were Her Way Here, And It's A Dangerous Thing To Be A Door.

People Are Icebergs. So Much Of Us Is Underneath.

There Is A Madness, Yes, This Is True. Few Mortals Possess It, The Willingness To Step Away From The Protection Of Sanity. To Walk Into The Wild Wood Of Madness...

Why Are We Talking About This Good And Evil? They're Just Names For Sides. We Know That.

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I Think . . . I Said Things To Silas. He'll Be Angry.' 'if He Didn't Care About You, You Couldn't Upset Him,' Was All She Said.

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My Wife, Amanda, Is Terribly Good At Warping Reality. She Is Like A Bowling Ball On A Rubber Sheet, And You Find Yourself Living In Her Universe, Doing Things That Are Completely Unexpected Or Unimaginable For You, But You Blink And You're Up On A Stage Singing, Or Wearing A Peculiar Wig, Or Writing A Book Filled With Feelings And Emotion, Or Doing Something Equally As Unlikely.

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I Thought I Was Your Destination. Looks Like I Was Just Another Stop On The Line.

This Is A Roadside Attraction,' Said Wednesday. 'one Of The Finest. Which Means It Is A Place Of Power.

Human Beings Do Not Like Being Pushed About By Gods. They May Seem To, On The Surface, But Somewhere On The Inside, Underneath It All, They Sense It, And They Resent It.

It's Not What I'd Want For At My Funeral. When I Die, I Just Want Them To Plant Me Somewhere Warm. And Then When The Pretty Women Walk Over My Grave I Would Grab Their Ankles, Like In That Movie.

There Are Some As Are What They Are. And There Are Some As Aren't What They Seem To Be. And There Are Some As Only Seem To Be What They Seem To Be.

When I Was About Ten My Favourite Article In The Huge And Mouldering Encyclopedia Britannica We Owned (the Ninth Edition) Was The One On Lycanthropy. (yes, I Had A Favourite 1890s Britannica Article When I Was Ten. I Am Now Aware This Is Not Entirely Usual.)

Encyclopedia Britannica

Chicago Happened Slowly, Like A Migraine. First They Were Driving Through Countryside, Then, Imperceptibly, The Occasional Town Became A Low Suburban Sprawl, And The Sprawl Became The City.

Libraries Are The Thin Red Line Between Civilization And Barbarism.

Imagine A Mosaic Picture Of A House In The Country: Lots Of Red And Blue And Yellow And Black And Brown And White And A Dozen Different Shades Of Green Tiles Which Make A Beautiful Picture If You Stand Back Far Enough. All The Little Red Squares Are True - True Things, True Places, True Feelings. But The Red Squares Aren't The Picture. All The Rest Of It Is Lies And Stories, Often Within The Same Sentence.

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 Would Read. I Would Explore

I Have Heard The Languages Of Apocalypse, And Now I Shall Embrace The Silence.

The Only Advice I Can Give You Is What You're Telling Yourself. Only, Maybe You're Too Scared To Listen.

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

You Know The Best Thing About Aeroplanes? Apart From The Peanuts In Little Silver Bags, I Mean. It's Looking Out Of The Windows At The Clouds And Thinking Maybe I Could Go Walking In There. Maybe It's A Special Place Where Everything's Okay. Sometimes I Do Go Walking In The Clouds But It's Just Cold And Wet And Empty. But When You Look Out Of A Plane It's A Special World... And I Like It.

There Are A Hundred Things She Has Tried To Chase Away The Things She Won't Remember And That She Can't Even Let Herself Think About Because That's When The Birds Scream And The Worms Crawl And Somewhere In Her Mind It's Always Raining A Slow Endless Drizzle.

"death's A Capricious Thing, Innit?" "yes. Yes, She Is."

I Know That The Way To Be A Really Successful Writer Is To Write The Same Kind Of Book Over And Over Again. Find The Kind Of Thing That People Like And Just Write One Of Those Over And Over Again. I Don't Do That. I Just Keep Doing Different Things.

Even The Proudest Spirit Can Be Broken With Love.

People Tend To Find Books When They Are Ready For Them.

You Can't Just Boss Bacteria Around Like That," Said The Younger Mrs. Hempstock. "they Don't Like It." "stuff And Silliness," Said The Old Lady. "you Leave Wigglers Alone And They'll Be Carrying On Like Anything. Show Them Who's Boss And They Can't Do Enough For You. You've Tasted My Cheese.

I Think You Have To Accept That An Artist Also Has A Relationship With His Or Her Art And His Or Her Fans: You Are In An Open Relationship Whether You Like It Or Not. Give The Artist Room To Go Into The Place They Create (literally Or Metaphorically) . And Love Them When They Can't Remember Where They Put Their Keys.

Be Proud Of Your Mistakes. Well, Proud May Not Be Exactly The Right Word, But Respect Them, Treasure Them, Be Kind To Them, Learn From Them. And, More Than That, And More Important Than That, Make Them. Make Mistakes. Make Great Mistakes, Make Wonderful Mistakes, Make Glorious Mistakes. Better To Make A Hundred Mistakes Than To Stare At A Blank Piece Of Paper Too Scared To Do Anything Wrong.

Most People Can Start A Short Story Or A Novel. If You're A Writer, You Can Finish Them. Finish Enough Of Them, And You May Be Good Enough To Be Publishable.

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Because, If One Is Writing Novels Today, Concentrating On The Beauty Of The Prose Is Right Up There With Concentrating On Your Semi-colons, For Wasted Effort.

I Was Always Aware, Reading Chesterton, That There Was Someone Writing This Who Rejoiced In Words, Who Deployed Them On The Page As An Artist Deploys His Paints Upon His Palette. Behind Every Chesterton Sentence There Was Someone Painting With Words, And It Seemed To Me That At The End Of Any Particularly Good Sentence Or Any Perfectly-put Paradox, You Could Hear The Author, Somewhere Behind The Scenes, Giggling With Delight.

A Piratical Ghost Story In Thirteen Ingenious But Potentially Disturbing Rhyming Couplets, Originally Conceived As A Confection Both To Amuse And To Entertain By Mr. Neil Gaiman, Scrivener, And Then Doodled, Elaborated Upon, Illustrated, And Beaten Soundly By Mr. Cris Grimly, Etcher And Illuminator, Featuring Two Brave Children, Their Diminutive But No Less Courageous Gazelle, And A Large Number Of Extremely Dangerous Trolls, Monsters, Bugbears, Creatures, And Other Such Nastiness, Many Of Which Have Perfectly Disgusting Eating Habits And Ought Not, Under Any Circumstances, To Be Encouraged.

Life Is A Disease, Sexually Transmitted And Fatal.

Sexton: I Think The Whole World's Gone Mad. Death: Uh-uh. It's Always Like This. You Probably Just Don't Get Out Enough.

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.

That's Sexism, That Is. Going Around Giving People Girly Presents Just Because They're A Girl.

When I Started Out, There Were A Lot Of Things I Knew I Couldn't Do, And A Lot Of Things I Only Found Out I Couldn't Do By Going And Doing It. And No-one Was Watching, And Nobody Cared.

Belinda Stared Into The Fire For Some Time, Thinking About What She Had In Her Life, And What She Had Given Up; And Whether It Would Be Worse To Love Someone Who Was No Longer There, Or Not To Love Someone Who Was.

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.

I Very Rarely Want To Go Back And Fix Things, Because I'm Much More Interested In The Next Thing, And In Taking What I Learned From The Things That Don't Work, And Applying Them To New Things That May Work.

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.

Spider Venom Comes In Many Forms. It Can Often Take A Long While To Discover The Full Effects Of The Bite. Naturalists Have Pondered This For Years: There Are Spiders Whose Bite Can Cause The Place Bitten To Rot And To Die, Sometimes More Than A Year After It Was Bitten. As To Why Spiders Do This, The Answer Is Simple. It's Because Spiders Think This Is Funny, And They Don't Want You Ever To Forget Them.

Sometimes I Wish That Just Solving The Plot Problems Was Enough. And Then Elves Would Go And Do All The Actual Work Moving The Words Around.

If Not For Death, They’d Be Content To Simply Exist, But With Death, Well, Their Lives Will Have Meaning — A Boundary Beyond Which The Living Cannot Cross.

It Is Sometimes A Mistake To Climb; It Is Always A Mistake Never Even To Make The Attempt.

I Think I Fell In Love With Her, A Little Bit. Isn't That Dumb? But It Was Like I Knew Her. Like She Was My Oldest, Dearest Friend. The Kind Of Person You Can Tell Anything To, No Matter How Bad, And They'll Still Love You, Because They Know You. I Wanted To Go With Her. I Wanted Her To Notice Me. And Then She Stopped Walking. Under The Moon, She Stopped. And Looked At Us. She Looked At Me. Maybe She Was Trying To Tell Me Something; I Don't Know. She Probably Didn't Even Know I Was There. But I'll Always Love Her. All My Life.

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.

In Hollywood, Lying Is Something That People Do Like Breathing.

Everything That Is,casts A Shadow

Soon,” Said The Crackling Voice Of The Flame, Coming From Behind Him, “they Will Fall. Soon They Will Fall And The Star People Will Meet The Earth People. There Will Be Heroes Among Them, And Men Who Will Slay Monsters And Bring Knowledge, But None Of Them Will Be Gods. This Is A Poor Place For Gods.

I Watch My Heart Disappearing Into Her Rosebud Mouth. My Valentine's Jest Somehow Seems Less Funny.

Never Trust A Demon. He Has A Hundred Motives For Anything He Does... Ninety-nine Of Them, At Least, Are Malevolent.

I Don't Just Randomly Kill People... I Kill People When It's Funny.

I Think I Love My Dreaming Process Because One Of The Things That My Dreaming Process Does Is Sort Out Stories For Me.

Why Do I Have This Imagination? It's The Only One I've Got!

I Don't Know If Any Single Book Made Me Want To Write. C.s. Lewis Was The First Writer To Make Me Aware That Somebody Was Writing The Book I Was Reading - These Wonderful Parenthetical Asides To The Reader.

If A Devil Is One Who Dares, When Others Hold Back, Then I Am Happy To Play The Devil In This Mystery, Boy.

If I Come Back, It Will Be A Place, But It Won't Be A Home Any Longer.

With American Gods I Was Trying Very, Very Consciously - There Was A Level At Which It Was A Little Like Trying To Write A Novel In French - You Know, "this Novel Is To Be Written In American."

That Which Is Dreamed Can Never Be Lost, Can Never Be Undreamed.

There Are Four Simple Ways For The Observant To Tell Mr. Croup And Mr. Vandemar Apart: First, Mr. Vandemar Is Two And A Half Heads Taller Than Mr. Croup; Second, Mr. Croup Has Eyes Of A Faded China Blue, While Mr. Vandemar's Eyes Are Brown; Third, While Mr. Vandemar Fashioned The Rings He Wears On His Right Hand Out Of The Skulls Of Four Ravens, Mr. Croup Has No Obvious Jewelery; Fourth, Mr. Croup Likes Words, While Mr. Vandemar Is Always Hungry. Also, They Look Nothing At All Alike.

Things Bloosom In Their Time. They Bud And Bloom, Blossom And Fade. Everything In Its Time.

Just Remember, What The French Say. No, Probably Not The French, They've Got A President Or Something. The Brits, Maybe, Or The Swedes. You Know What I Mean?" "no, Matthew. What Do They Say?" "the King Is Dead, That's What They Say. The King Is Dead. Long Live The King.

I'd Love To Write Some Porn, But I Don't Know If I Have The Right Engines. When I Was A Young Man And I Was Tempted To Write Porn, Imaginary Parents Would Appear Over My Shoulder And Read What I Was Writing; Just About The Point That I Managed To Banish The Imaginary Parents, Real Children Would Lean Over My Shoulder And Read What I Was Writing.

She Was Beautiful, But She Was Beautiful In The Way A Forest Fire Was Beautiful.

The Truth Is, It's Not The Idea, It's Never The Idea, It's Always What You Do With It.

You Can Always Cheat An Honest Man, But It Takes More Work.

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.

And There Are Always People Who Find Their Lives Have Become So Unsupportable They Believe The Best Thing They Could Do Would Be To Hasten Their Transition To Another Plane Of Existence.' 'they Kill Themselves, You Mean?' Said Bod. [...] 'indeed.' 'does It Work? Are They Happier Dead?' 'sometimes. Mostly, No. It's Like The People Who Believe They'll Be Happy If They Go And Live Somewhere Else, But Who Learn It Doesn't Work That Way. Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

When Things Go Wrong, This Is What You Should Do. Make Good Art.

When Things Get Tough

Adventures Are All Very Well In Their Place, But There's A Lot To Be Said For Regular Meals And Freedom From Pain.

She Sat Down On One Of Her Grandmother's Uncomfortable Armchairs, And The Cat Sprang Up Into Her Lap And Made Itself Comfortable. The Light That Came Through The Picture Window Was Daylight, Real Golden Late-afternoon Daylight, Not A White Mist Light. The Sky Was A Robin's-egg Blue, And Coraline Could See Trees And, Beyond The Trees, Green Hills, Which Faded On The Horizon Into Purples And Grays. The Sky Had Never Seemed So Sky, The World Had Never Seemed So World ... Nothing, She Thought, Had Ever Been So Interesting.

I Know That This Is The Internet, And We're All Anonymous And All That, But Really. It Doesn't Hurt To Try To Be Nice.

Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.

I Loved The Fact That I Was Suddenly No Longer Dependent On Whether A Store Took Out An Ad In The Right Place, Or On The Word On The Street.

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

Twitter Is Great And It's Glorious And It's Easy, But If Somebody Comes Up With Something Kind Of Like Twitter Tomorrow, That's Better Or Smarter Or More Useful, In Three Weeks Time, Twitter Could More Or Less Be History Because That's How Fast Things Go.

There's Never Been A True War That Wasn't Fought Between Two Sets Of People Who Were Certain They Were In The Right. The Really Dangerous People Believe They Are Doing Whatever They Are Doing Solely And Only Because It Is Without Question The Right Thing To Do. And That Is What Makes Them Dangerous.

Writing, And Especially Writing A Novel, Where You Get To Sit In A Room By Yourself With Either A Pen And A Paper Or A Computer For A Couple Of Years, Is A Very Solitary Occupation. You Can Read Sales Figures - A Hundred Thousand Books Sold, Half A Million Books Sold - But They Are Just Numbers.

Write Your Story As It Needs To Be Written. Write It Honestly, And Tell It As Best You Can. I'm Not Sure That There Are Any Other Rules. Not Ones That Matter.

It's Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Into, If One Works At It. And Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Out Of, If One Assumes That Everything Will, Somehow Or Other, Work Out For The Best.

Virginia Is The Place, Where, Technologically Speaking, They Will Burn People At The Stake For Possessing Such Things As Toasters.

The Moonlight Was Enough. It Would Do.

You Know That I Love You." And Despite Herself, Coraline Nodded. It Was True. The Other Mother Loved Her. But She Loved Coraline As A Miser Loves Money, Or A Dragon Loves Its Gold. In The Other Mother's Button Eyes, Coraline Knew That She Was A Possession, Nothing More. A Tolerated Pet, Whose Behavior Was No Longer Amusing.

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