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Do The Stuff That Only You Can Do. The Urge, Starting Out, Is To Copy. And That's Not A Bad Thing. Most Of Us Only Find Our Own Voices After We've Sounded Like A Lot Of Other People. But The One Thing That You Have That Nobody Else Has Is You. Your Voice, Your Mind, Your Story, Your Vision. So Write And Draw And Build And Play And Dance And Live As Only You Can. The Moment That You Feel That, Just Possibly, You're Walking Down The Street Naked, Exposing Too Much Of Your Heart And Your Mind And What Exists On The Inside, Showing Too Much Of Yourself. That's The Moment You May Be Starting To Get It Right.

-Neil Gaiman

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Do The Stuff That

Neil Gaiman

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Do The Stuff That Only You Can Do. The Urge, Starting Out, Is To Copy. And That's Not A Bad Thing. Most Of Us Only Find Our Own Voices After We've Sounded Like A Lot Of Other People. But The One Thing That You Have That Nobody Else Has Is You. Your Voice, Your Mind, Your Story, Your Vision. So Write And Draw And Build And Play And Dance And Live As Only You Can. The Moment That You Feel That, Just Possibly, You're Walking Down The Street Naked, Exposing Too Much Of Your Heart And Your Mind And What Exists On The Inside, Showing Too Much Of Yourself. That's The Moment You May Be Starting To Get It Right.

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It's Only A World, After All, And They're Just Sand Grains In The Desert, Worlds.

You'll Think This Is A Bit Silly, But I'm A Bit--well, I Have A Thing About Birds." "what, A Phobia?" "sort Of." "well, That's The Common Term For An Irrational Fear Of Birds." "what Do They Call A Rational Fear Of Birds, Then?

"some Things May Change," Said Wednesday, Abruptly. "people, However... People Stay The Same."

People Want To Forget The Impossible. It Makes Their World Safer.

Chantal Is Having A Relationship With A Sentence. Just One Of Those Things. A Chance Meeting That Grew Into Something Important For The Both Of Them.

She Smiled At Coraline, As If It Had Been A Very Long Time Since She Had Smiled And She Had Almost, But Not Quite, Forgotten How.

Libraries Are The Thin Red Line Between Civilization And Barbarism.

You Get On With Your Own Life. Lettie Gave It To You. You Just Have To Grow Up And Try And Be Worth It.

I Always Say That If You're A Novelist, The Challenge Is Not Writing What You Think Ought To Happen, But Trying In Some Way To Write What Did Happen In A World That Doesn't Necessarily Exist.

I've Been Making A List Of The Things They Don't Teach You At School. They Don't Teach You How To Love Somebody. They Don't Teach You How To Be Famous. They Don't Teach You How To Be Rich Or How To Be Poor. They Don't Teach You How To Walk Away From Someone You Don't Love Any Longer. They Don't Teach You How To Know What's Going On In Someone Else's Mind. They Don't Teach You What To Say To Someone Who's Dying. They Don't Teach You Anything Worth Knowing.

It’s Not That They’re Small, The Fair Folk. Especially Not The Queen Of Them All, Mab Of The Flashing Eyes And The Slow Smile With Lips That Can Conjure Your Heart Under The Hills For A Hundred Years. It’s Not That They’re Small. It’s That We’re So Far Away.

I Lived In Books More Than I Lived Anywhere Else.

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?

Something Told Him That Something Was Coming To An End. Not The World, Exactly. Just The Summer. There Would Be Other Summers, But There Would Never Be One Like This. Ever Again.

Everybody Going To Be Dead One Day, Just Give Them Time.

Lucifer Protests He Was Never To Blame For Inducing Anyone To Sin, And That He’s Never Had An Interest In Owning Souls: 'they Die, And They Come Here – Having Transgressed Against What They Believed To Be Right – And Expect Us To Fulfill Their Desire For Pain And Retribution. I Don’t Make Them Come Here… I Need No Souls. And How Can Anyone Own A Soul? No, They Belong To Themselves. They Just Hate To Have To Face Up To It.

We Often Confuse What We Wish For With What Is.

I Do Not Miss Childhood, But I Miss The Way I Took Pleasure In Small Things, Even As Greater Things Crumbled.

Goodnight World. While I Sleep, I Hope You'll All Continue To Do Whatever It Is You Do. Unless You Murder Sleeping Authors. Don't Do That.

There Are A Number Of Paths That Lead To This Place. I Have Been Avoiding Them For Some Small Time, Now.

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.

Everybody Has A Secret World Inside Of Them. I Mean Everybody. All Of The People In The Whole World, I Mean Everybody — No Matter How Dull And Boring They Are On The Outside. Inside Them They've All Got Unimaginable, Magnificent, Wonderful, Stupid, Amazing Worlds... Not Just One World. Hundreds Of Them. Thousands, Maybe.

Death Is The Second Oldest Of The Endless. It's Hard Not To Love Her. She Loves You, After All.

I Am Amiable. Vague. Puzzled. Messy-haired.

I Make Art, Sometimes I Make True Art, And Sometimes It Fills The Empty Places In My Life. Some Of Them. Not All.

Why Do They Blame Me For All Their Little Failings? They Use My Name As If I Spent My Entire Days Sitting On Their Shoulders, Forcing Them To Commits Acts They Would Otherwise Find Repulsive. 'the Devil Made Me Do It.' I Have Never Made One Of Them Do Anything. Never. They Live Their Own Tiny Lives. I Do Not Live Their Lives For Them.

It Was A Dream, And In Dreams You Have No Choices: Either There Are No Decisions To Be Made, Or They Were Made For You Long Before Ever The Dream Began.

American Gods Is About 200,000 Words Long, And I'm Sure There Are Words That Are Simply In There 'cause I Like Them. I Know I Couldn't Justify Each And Every One Of Them.

Most Of Us Only Find Our Own Voices After We've Sounded Like A Lot Of Other People.

Of Course, Everyone's Parents Are Embarrassing. It Goes With The Territory. The Nature Of Parents Is To Embarrass Merely By Existing, Just As It Is The Nature Of Children Of A Certain Age To Cringe With Embarrassment, Shame, And Mortification Should Their Parents So Much As Speak To Them On The Street.

All Writers Have This Vague Hope That The Elves Will Come In The Night And Finish Any Stories.

He Entertained These Thoughts Awkwardly, As A Man Entertains Unexpected Guests. Then, As He Reached His Objective, He Pushed These Thoughts Away, As A Man Apologizes To His Guests, And Leaves Them, Muttering Something About A Prior Engagement.

Not Knowing Everything Is All That Makes It Ok, Sometimes.

Knowing Everything

The War Had Begun And Nobody Saw It. The Storm Was Lowering And Nobody Knew It.

You Got To Understand The God Thing. It’s Not Magic. It’s About Being You, But The You That People Believe In. It’s About Being The Concentrated, Magnified, Essence Of You. It’s About Becoming Thunder, Or The Power Of A Running Horse, Or Wisdom. You Take All The Belief And Become Bigger, Cooler, More Than Human. You Crystallize.” He Paused. “and Then One Day They Forget About You, And They Don’t Believe In You, And They Don’t Sacrifice, And They Don’t Care, And The Next Thing You Know You’re Running A Three-card Monte Game On The Corner Of Broadway And Forty-third.

I Don't Think Immediate Tragedy Is A Very Good Source Of Art. It Can Be, But Too Often It's Raw And Painful And Un-dealt-with. Sometimes Art Can Be A Really Good Escape From The Intolerable, And A Good Place To Go When Things Are Bad, But That Doesn't Mean You Have To Write Directly About The Bad Thing; Sometimes You Need To Let Time Pass, And Allow The Thing That Hurts To Get Covered With Layers, And Then You Take It Out, Like A Pearl, And You Make Art Out Of It.

If You Go To Space, You'll Look Down And See No National Boundaries. You'll Never See The Gods People Are Killing Each Other Over, But They're Incredibly Real.

We Who Make Stories Know That We Tell Lies For A Living. But They Are Good Lies That Say True Things, And We Owe It To Our Readers To Build Them As Best We Can. Because Somewhere Out There Is Someone Who Needs That Story. Someone Who Will Grow Up With A Different Landscape, Who Without That Story Will Be A Different Person. And Who With That Story May Have Hope, Or Wisdom, Or Kindness, Or Comfort. And That Is Why We Write.

Nearly' Only Counts In Horseshoes And Hand-grenades.

Rock And Roll Stars Have It Much Better Than Writers When They're On A Tour.

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.

If You Dare Nothing, Then When The Day Is Over, Nothing Is All You Will Have Gained.

She Smiled Again. "do You Like Cat?" She Said. "yes," Said Richard. "i Quite Like Cats." Anaesthesia Looked Relieved. "thigh?" She Asked, "or Breast?

When I Was Young I Was A Fool. So Wrap Me Up In Dreams And Death.

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

Honestly, If You're Given The Choice Between Armageddon Or Tea, You Don't Say "what Kind Of Tea?"

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.

I Have World Class Photographic Red-eye Pretty Much All The Time. As A General Rule, If It's Taken With A Flash, I Look Like I Am Possessed By The Blazing Forces Of Darkness, At Least In The Eye Department.

Most Books On Witchcraft Will Tell You That Witches Work Naked. This Is Because Most Books On Witchcraft Were Written By Men.

Whatever It Is You're Scared Of Doing, Do It.

I Took Delight In Hurling Books Across The Room If I Knew I Would Not Be Reading The Second Chapter. Then I’d Go And Pick Them Up Again, Because They Are Books, After All, And We Are Not Savages.

There Is Something About Riding A Unicorn, For Those People Who Still Can, Which Is Unlike Any Other Experience: Exhilarating, And Intoxicating, And Fine.

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

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.

It Stared At Them, And It Paused For A Hundred Years, Which Transpired In A Dozen Heart Beats.

She Was Witchy, Yes, And In Charge Of A Cauldron Roiling With Ideas And Stories, But She Always Gave The Impression That The Stories, The Ones She Wrote And Wrote So Very Well And So Wisely, Had Simply Happened, And That All She Had Done Was To Hold The Pen. (on Diana Wynne Jones)

Break Rules. Leave The World More Interesting For Your Being Here.

Every Now And Then I'll Do Little Things, A Short Story Or Something, That Doesn't Have Any Fantastical Elements, But Mostly I Like The Power Of Playing God And I Like To Imagine Things.

Do Not Lose Hope — What You Seek Will Be Found. Trust Ghosts. Trust Those That You Have Helped To Help You In Their Turn. Trust Dreams. Trust Your Heart, And Trust Your Story. (from 'instructions')

Names Come And Names Go.

Yes. Growing Up Is Highly Overrated. Just Be An Author.

I Really Don't Know What "i Love You" Means. I Think It Means "don't Leave Me Here Alone.

Do The Stuff That Only You Can Do. The Urge, Starting Out, Is To Copy. And That's Not A Bad Thing. Most Of Us Only Find Our Own Voices After We've Sounded Like A Lot Of Other People. But The One Thing That You Have That Nobody Else Has Is You. Your Voice, Your Mind, Your Story, Your Vision. So Write And Draw And Build And Play And Dance And Live As Only You Can. The Moment That You Feel That, Just Possibly, You're Walking Down The Street Naked, Exposing Too Much Of Your Heart And Your Mind And What Exists On The Inside, Showing Too Much Of Yourself. That's The Moment You May Be Starting To Get It Right.

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.

Here You Go, She Said. I Don't Need It Anymore. I'm Very Grateful. I Think It May Have Saved My Life, Saved Some Other People's Death.

People Kill What They Fear. They Burned, And Drowned, And Hanged Those They Saw As Witches, The Devil's Servants: The Wise Women And The Cunning Men, The Unfortunate, The Lost And The Strange

But How Can You Walk Away From Something And Still Come Back To It?

I Thought, I'm Going To Die. And, Thinking That, I Was Determined To Live.

In Every Way That Counted, I Was Dead. Inside Somewhere Maybe I Was Screaming And Weeping And Howling Like An Animal, But That Was Another Person Deep Inside, Another Person Who Had No Access To The Lips And Face And Mouth And Head, So On The Surface I Just Shrugged And Smile And Kept Moving. If I Could Have Physically Passed Away, Just Let It All Go, Like That, Without Doing Anything, Stepped Out Of Life As Easily As Walking Through A Door I Would Have Done. But I Was Going To Sleep At Night And Waking In The Morning, Disappointed To Be There And Resigned To Existence.

No, Look, There's A Blue Box. It's Bigger On The Inside Than It Is On The Outside. It Can Go Anywhere In Time And Space And Sometimes Even Where It's Meant To Go. And When It Turns Up, There's A Bloke In It Called The Doctor And There Will Be Stuff Wrong And He Will Do His Best To Sort It Out And He Will Probably Succeed Cos He's Awesome. Now Sit Down, Shut Up, And Watch 'blink'.

There Are People You Do Not Want To Upset In The World - The Politically Disenfranchized Who Feel They Have Nothing To Lose, Those Who Feel That The Time Has Come For Revolution ... Then Out On The Edges Beyond Any Of Those Are Science Fiction Fans Whose Favorite Show Has Been Canceled In An Untimely Way.

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.

I Would Not Describe Myself As A Political Writer Except In The Sense That The Personal Is Political, Which Is Something That I Do Strongly Believe. And In That Sense American Gods Is A Very Personal Novel And A Political Novel. I Was Trying To Describe The Experience Of Coming To America As An Immigrant, The Experience Of Watching The Way That America Tends To Eat Other Cultures.

The Marquis Sighed. "i Thought It Was Just A Legend," He Said. "like The Alligators In The Sewers Of New York City." Old Bailey Nodded, Sagely: "what, The Big White Buggers? They're Down There. I Had A Friend Lost A Head To One Of Them." A Moment Of Silence. Old Naeiley Handed The Statue Back To The Marquis. Then He Raised His Hand, And Snapped It, Like A Crocodile Hand, At The Carabas. "it Was Ok," Gurned Old Bailey With A Grin That Was Most Terrible To Behold. "he Had Another.

Peas Baffled Me. I Could Not Understand Why Grown-ups Would Take Things That Tasted So Good Raw, And Then Put Them In Tins, And Make Them Revolting.

I Do Not Believe That All Books Will Or Should Migrate Onto Screens: As Douglas Adams Once Pointed Out To Me, More Than 20 Years Before The Kindle Turned Up, A Physical Book Is Like A Shark. Sharks Are Old: There Were Sharks In The Ocean Before The Dinosaurs. And The Reason There Are Still Sharks Around Is That Sharks Are Better At Being Sharks Than Anything Else Is.

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.

Most Of What I Want To Try To Do Is Continue To Go Places With Fiction That I've Never Gone Before, And Tell Stories I've Never Told Before, And One Of The Problems You Rapidly Discover About Fans Is What Fans Want Is The Last Thing They Liked. They Want More Of That.

I Suppose The Point You Grow Up Is The Point You Let The Dreams Go.

Death’s A Funny Thing. I Used To Think It Was A Big, Sudden Thing, Like A Huge Owl That Would Swoop Down Out Of The Night And Carry You Off. I Don’t Anymore. I Think It’s A Slow Thing. Like A Thief Who Comes To Your House Day After Day, Taking A Little Thing Here And A Little Thing There, And One Day You Walk Round Your House And There’s Nothing There To Keep You, Nothing To Make You Want To Stay. And Then You Lie Down And Shut Up Forever. Lots Of Little Deaths Until The Last Big One.

Writers May Be Solitary But They Also Tend To Flock Together: They Like Being Solitary Together.

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

There May Be A Parallel Between Woodcuts And Radio; Radio Plays Are A Living Art Form Everywhere Except The Usa.

I Think That The Biggest, Quickest And Hardest Thing To Learn For A Writer Is That What We Think Of As The Unchanging Verities Of Story Are A Load Of Bollocks. Absolute Rubbish. There Are No Unchanging Verities.

People Who Believe They'll Be Happy If They Go And Live Somewhere Else, Learn It Doesn't Work That Way. Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

Las Vegas Has Become A Child's Picture-book Dream Of A City -- Here A Storybook Castle, There A Sphinx-flanked Black Pyramid Beaming White Light Into The Darkness As A Landing Beam For Ufos, And Everywhere Neon Oracles And Twisting Screens Predict Happiness And Good Fortune, Announce Singers And Comedians And Magicians In Residence Or On Their Way, And The Lights Always Flash And Beckon And Call.

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.

You're Brave. You Are The Bravest Person I Know, And You Are My Friend. I Don't Care If You Are Imaginary.

America Was, To Them, The Place That Good People Went To When They Died. They Were Prepared To Believe Just About Anything Could Happen In America.

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.

Lies And Half-truths Fall Like Snow, Covering The Things That I Remember, The Things I Saw. A Landscape, Unrecognizable After A Snowfall; That Is That She Has Made Of My Life.

I Still Love The Book-ness Of Books, The Smell Of Books: I Am A Book Fetishist—books To Me Are The Coolest And Sexiest And Most Wonderful Things There Are.

I Was A Voracious Reader And I Could Never Understand Why Comics Were Of Any Less Merit Or Importance Than Any Other Way Of Writing. I Think The Thing That Keeps Me With Comics Is There's Still So Much To Be Done. There's Still This Huge Unplowed Field, This Huge Unexplored Wilderness, And As Long As I Can Keep Doing New Things And Coming Up With New Things, I Will.

Stories You Read When You're The Right Age Never Quite Leave You. You May Forget Who Wrote Them Or What The Story Was Called. Sometimes You'll Forget Precisely What Happened, But If A Story Touches You It Will Stay With You, Haunting The Places In Your Mind That You Rarely Ever Visit.

I Like The Stars. It's The Illusion Of Permanence, I Think. I Mean, They're Always Flaring Up And Caving In And Going Out. But From Here, I Can Pretend...i Can Pretend That Things Last. I Can Pretend That Lives Last Longer Than Moments. Gods Come, And Gods Go. Mortals Flicker And Flash And Fade. Worlds Don't Last; And Stars And Galaxies Are Transient, Fleeting Things That Twinkle Like Fireflies And Vanish Into Cold And Dust. But I Can Pretend.

Everything Here Is So Weak, Little Girl. Everything Breaks So Easily. They Want Such Simple Things.

I Imagine The World Dividing Into The People Who Want To Feed Their Children, And The Ones Shooting At Them.

Is There Any Person In The World Who Does Not Dream? Who Does Not Contain Within Them Worlds Unimagined?

Something Feels Weird," He Told Laura. That Wasn't The First Thing He Said To Her. The First Thing Was "i Love You," Because It's A Good Thing To Say If You Can Mean It, And Shadow Did.

I Loved All Books That I Could Read, And I Never Knew If I Was Ready For It Until I Tried To Read It, So I Tried To Read Everything.

I Knowed A Man In Paphlagonia Who'd Swallow A Live Snake Every Morning, When He Got Up. He Used To Say, He Was Certain Of One Thing, That Nothing Worse Would Happen To Him All Day. 'course They Made Him Eat A Bowlful Of Hairy Centipedes Before They Hung Him, So Maybe That Claim Was A Bit Presumptive.

I Think Hell Is Something You Carry Around With You, Not Somewhere You Go.

I Always Wanted To Be A Writer, But Alan Moore's Work And Help Inspired Me To Write Comics. In Some Ways The Biggest Influence On Me Writing Was Punk. There Was The Idea That You Could Do Something By Simply Doing It.

Go, And Make Interesting Mistakes, Make Amazing Mistakes, Make Glorious And Fantastic Mistakes. Break Rules. Leave The World More Interesting For Your Being Here.

It Begins, As Most Things Begin, With A Song.

When You Dream, Sometimes You Remember. When You Wake, You Always Forget.

I Like Airplanes. I Like Anywhere That Isn't A Proper Place. I Like In Betweens.

This Is A Work Of Fiction. Still, Given An Infinite Number Of Possible Worlds, It Must Be True On One Of Them. And If A Story Set In An Infinite Number Of Possible Worlds Is True In One Of Them, Then It Must Be True In All Of Them. So Maybe, It's Not As Fictional As We Think.

Dreams Are Hopes, And Echoes Of Hope.

I Was A Book-y Child. I Was Much More Book-y Than Dark.

The Short Story Is Still Like The Novel's Wayward Younger Brother, We Know That It's Not Respectable - But I Think That Can Also Add To The Glory Of It.

I Believe That Mankind's Destiny Lies In The Stars.

Where Does Contagion End And Art Begin?

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.

If You Are Protected From Dark Things Then You Have No Protection Of, Knowledge Of, Or Understanding Of Dark Things When They Show Up.

I Wish Being A Beekeeper, Which I Am, Gave You A Free Pass On The Carbon Footprint, But It Doesn't.

Carbon Footprint

I Love Learning. I Tend To Stop Doing Things Once I Get Good At Them, And To Try Something Else I'm Not As Good At, Leaving A Bunch Of Fans Going, "but He Was Really Good At That. Why Isn't He Still Doing It?"

You Must Have A Bladder Like Lake Erie. I Think Empires Rose And Fell In The Time It Took You To Pee. I Could Hear It The Whole Time." Thank You. Do You Want Something?

I Am An Academic," Said Professor Mandalay, "and Thus Have No Finely Developed Senses That Would Be Comprehensible To Anyone Who Has Not Ever Needed To Grade Papers Without Actually Reading The Blessed Things.

I Think I've Got Fear Down, But How Do I Take It All The Way Up To Terror?

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.

If You Want To Call It That. But It Is A Very Specific Sort Of Magic. There's A Magic You Take From Death. Something Leaves The World, Something Else Comes Into It.

I Would Feel Infinitely More Comfortable In Your Presence If You Would Agree To Treat Gravity As A Law, Rather Than One Of A Number Of Suggested Options.

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

Amy: This Time Can We... Lose The Bunk Beds? The Doctor: No Bunk Beds Are Cool, A Bed With A Ladder, You Can't Beat That!

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.

With Pornography, If You Don't Get Hard Or Wet, Depending On Your Gender, It Didn't Work. With Humour, If You Don't Laugh It Didn't Work. And With Horror, If You Don't Get Scared Or Haunted, Depending On What It's Trying To Do, It Didn't Work. I'm Fascinated By Those Three Categories.

I Was The Kind Of Person Who Knew What He Wanted To Do; I Wanted To Write, I Wanted Not To Be In School, And I Felt That University Would Just Be Spending Another Four Years Of My Life Before I Could Write.

He Wondered Whether Home Was A Thing That Happened To A Place After A While, Or If It Was Something That You Found In The End, If You Simply Walked And Waited And Willed It Long Enough.

And Because Nobody's Done It Before, They Haven't Made Up Rules To Stop Anyone Doing That Again, Yet.

Stories Are Webs, Interconnected Strand To Strand, And You Follow Each Story To The Center, Because The Center Is The End. Each Person Is A Strand Of The Story.

I Will Write In Words Of Fire. I Will Write Them On Your Skin. I Will Write About Desire. Write Beginnings, Write Of Sin. You’re The Book I Love The Best, Your Skin Only Holds My Truth, You Will Be A Palimpsest Lines Of Age Rewriting Youth. You Will Not Burn Upon The Pyre. Or Be Buried On The Shelf. You’re My Letter To Desire: And You’ll Never Read Yourself. I Will Trace Each Word And Comma As The Final Dusk Descends, You’re My Tale Of Dreams And Drama, Let Us Find Out How It Ends.

She Seems So Cool, So Focused, So Quiet, Yet Her Eyes Remain Fixed Upon The Horizon. You Think You Know All There Is To Know About Her Immediately Upon Meeting Her, But Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong. Passion Flows Through Her Like A River Of Blood. She Only Looked Away For A Moment, And The Mask Slipped, And You Fell. All Your Tomorrows Start Here.

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

He Stared Up At The Stars, And It Seemed To Him Then That They Were Dancers, Stately And Graceful, Performing A Dance Almost Infinite In Its Complexity. He Imagined He Could See The Very Faces Of The Stars; Pale, They Were, And Smiling Gently, As If They Had Spent So Much Time Above The World, Watching The Scrambling And The Joy And The Pain Of The People Below Them, That They Could Not Help Being Amused Every Time Another Little Human Believed Itself The Center Of Its World, As Each Of Us Does.

Sometimes I Suspect That We Build Our Traps Ourselves, Then We Back Into Them, Pretending Amazement The While.

There Was Nowhere They Could Have Gone And They Went There Anyway.

Finish What You're Writing. Whatever You Have To Do To Finish It, Finish It.

Life Is A Disease, Sexually Transmitted And Fatal.

When Angels Go Bad They Are Worse Than Anyone Else. Remember Lucifer Used To Be An Angel.

I Used To Get My Best Ideas From Being Bored, And Now, If I Even Think I'm Being Faintly Bored, I Have Two Million Twitter Followers I Can Engage With. It's Great, But I Also Think It's Important To Be Able To Let Your Thoughts Flow And Percolate.

Stories Are Like Spiders, With All They Long Legs, And Stories Are Like Spiderwebs, Which Man Gets Himself All Tangled Up In But Which Look Pretty When You See Them Under A Leaf In The Morning Dew, And In The Elegant Way That They Connect To One Another, Each To Each.

A Story Only Matters, I Suspect, To The Extent That The People In The Story Change.

Put One Word After Another. Find The Right Word, Put It Down.

[i Spent] Much Of My Time Reminding Matt Groening That I Really Need To Be A Head In A Jar On Futurama.

When I Was A Kid, We Actually Lived In A House That Had Been Divided In Two At One Point, Which Meant That One Room In Our House Opened Up Onto A Brick Wall. And I Was Convinced All I Had To Do Was Just Open It The Right Way And It Wouldn't Be A Brick Wall. So I'd Sidle Over To The Door And I'd Pull It Open.

I've Been Blogging Since February Of 2001. When I Started Blogging, It Was A Dinosaur Blog. It Was Me And A Handful Of Tyrannosaurs. We'd Be Writing Blog Entries Like, 'the Tyrannosaurus Is Getting Grumpy.'

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

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.

I Feel Like I Am Involved In An Obscure And Complex Version Of Poker In A Pitch-dark Room, With Blank Cards, For Infinite Stakes, With A Dealer Who Won't Tell Me The Rules, And Who Smiles All The Time.

There's Definitely A Feeling With A Short Story That It's Pure Story Telling. You're Not Really Worried About Theme. You're Not Going To Stay With The Characters Long Enough To Live Your Life With Them. And You Have Different Kinds Of Relationships With Them.

What's It Like Then?" Asked Old Bailey. "being Dead?" The Marquis Sighed. And Then He Twisted His Lips Up Into A Smile, And With A Glitter Of His Old Self, He Replied, "live Long Enough, Old Bailey, And You Can Find Out For Yourself.

There Aren't Any Good Guys, And There Aren't Any Bad Guys. There's Just Us. People. Doing Our Best To Get By.

I'm Never Quite Sure If I'm Me When I'm Dressed Up.

Richard Began To Understand Darkness: Darkness As Something Solid And Real, So Much More Than A Simple Absence Of Light. He Felt It Touch His Skin, Questing, Moving, Exploring: Gliding Through His Mind. It Slipped Into His Lungs, Behind His Eyes, Into His Mouth.

My Guiltiest Pleasure Is Harry Stephen Keeler. He May Have Been The Greatest Bad Writer America Has Ever Produced. Or Perhaps The Worst Great Writer. I Do Not Know. There Are Few Faults You Can Accuse Him Of That He Is Not Guilty Of. But I Love Him.

You're Alive, Bod. That Means You Have Infinite Potential. You Can Do Anything, Make Anything, Dream Anything. If You Can Change The World, The World Will Change. Potential. Once You're Dead, It's Gone. Over. You've Made What You've Made, Dreamed Your Dream, Written Your Name. You May Be Buried Here, You May Even Walk. But That Potential Is Finished.

What Do Stars Do? They Shine.

I Like Horror, But I Tend To Like It As Seasoning. I'd Get Very Bored If I Was Told I Had To Write A Horror Novel. I'd Love To Write A Novel With Horror Elements, But Too Much, And It Doesn't Taste Of Anything Else.

After A While It Sort Of Began To Rain, Which Is To Say That It Was The Kind Of Rain That Never Comes To A Decision About Whether It's Actually Raining Or Not. Driving In It, You Would Never Have Been Certain Whether Or Not To Turn On Your Wipers.

Bod Shrugged. "so?" He Said. "it's Only Death. I Mean, All Of My Best Friends Are Dead.

There Are Lots Of Artists In The World. But There's Only One You. And The Only Person Who Has Your Point Of View Is You. If You Decide Not To Make Things, All You've Done Is Deprive The World Of All The Stuff That Only You Could Have Brought To It.

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 A Stranger And You Took Me In. -joji G. Shoji, D. 1921

It Won't Hurt, Said Her Other Father. Coraline Knew That When Grown-ups Told You Something Wouldn't Hurt It Almost Always Did. She Shook Her Head.

Like The Newspapers Used To Say, If The Truth Isn't Big Enough, You Print The Legend.

My Very Small Part In Watchmen Is That, Every Now And Then, Alan Would Phone Me: ''neil, You're An Educated Man. Where Does It Say...'' He Would Need A Quote From The Bible, Or An Essay About Owls. I Was His Occasional Research Assistant.

I Can Get Away Before The Storm Hits. Away From A World In Which Opiates Have Become The Religion Of The Masses.

We Wrapped Our Dreams In Words And Patterned The Words So That They Would Live Forever, Unforgettable.

I'm Just Going To Stay Here, In The Darkness Under The Arch. I Can Hear You All Out There, Trip-trapping, Trip-trapping Over My Bridge. Oh Yes, I Can Hear You. But I'm Not Coming Out.

A Nice, Easy Place For Freedom Of Speech To Be Eroded Is Comics, Because Comics Are A Natural Target Whenever An Election Comes Up.

Freedom Of Speech

People Seem To Think That They Can't Come Up With Ideas, And They're Wrong. They Can And They Do, But They Just Think Of It As Daydreaming, Or Wasting Time. Kids Get Told Not To Make Things Up, And In My Case, Nobody Told Me Long Enough, Or It Just Didn't Stick.

As We Age, We Become Our Parents; Live Long Enough And We See Faces Repeat In Time.

A Typical National World Weekly Would Tell The World How Jesus' Face Was Seen On A Big Mac Bun Bought By Someone From Des Moines, With An Artist's Impression Of The Bun; How Elvis Presley Was Recently Sighted Working In A Burger Lord In Des Moines; How Listening To Elvis Records Cured A Des Moines Housewife's Cancer; How The Spate Of Werewolves Infesting The Midwest Are The Offspring Of Noble Pioneer Women Raped By Bigfoot; And That Elvis Was Taken By Space Aliens In 1976 Because He Was Too Good For This World. Remarkably, One Of These Stories Is Indeed True.

I Don't Know Much More Than I Did When I Was Alive. Most Of The Stuff I Know Now That I Didn't Know Then I Can't Put Into Words.

American Gods Was Designed To Be If Not Open-ended, At Least A Trilogy Kind Of Shape, So There's Definitely One More Book, Probably Another Couple Of Books There To Get Written.

I Started Writing When I Was About 20, 21 Maybe.

Whatever's Happening," She Said, Eventually, "it Can All Be Sorted Out." She Saw The Expression On My Face Then, Worried. Scared Even. And She Said, "after Pancakes.

I Believe That All Men Are Just Overgrown Boys With Deep Problems Communicating.

I'm Willing To Make A Fool Out Of Myself In Public. I'm Also Willing To Make Those Mistakes That You're Going To Make The First Time You Go Out, So Hopefully The Next Time It Will Be Better.

Great, Big, Serious Novels Always Get Awards. If It's A Battle Between A Great, Big, Serious Novel And A Funny Novel, The Funny Novel Is Doomed.

You Know I Love You,' Said The Other Mother Flatly. 'you Have A Very Funny Way Of Showing It,' Said Coraline.

I Started Out Writing Much More Science Fictiony Stuff And Writing About Science Fiction.

I Always Figure There Are Novels And Short Stories, And In Those, I'm God. No One Tells Me What To Do. I Don't Have To Lose A Page, Or Cut Anything, It's Just Mine. Then There Are Other Things Where You're Up Against Realities.

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.

The Really Important Thing To Be Was Yourself, Just As Hard As You Could.

Important Things

Charitably... I Think... Sometimes, Perhaps, One Must Change Or Die. And, In The End, There Were, Perhaps, Limits To How Much He Could Let Himself Change.

We Get To Experience The Same Thing In Very Different Ways With Different Parts Of Ourselves.

Sometimes Human Beings Are Very Much Like Bees. Bees Are Fiercely Protective Of Their Hive, Provided You Are Outside It. Once You’re In, The Workers Sort Of Assume That It Must Have Been Cleared By Management And Take No Notice; Various Freeloading Insects Have Evolved A Mellifluous Existence Because Of This Very Fact. Humans Act The Same Way.

My People, We Stay Indoors. We Have Keyboards. We Have Darkness. It's Quiet.

A Flash Of Resentment. It's Hard Enough Being Alive, Trying To Survive In The World And Find Your Place In It, To Do The Things You Need To Do To Get By, Without Wondering If The Thing You Just Did, Whatever It Was, Was Worth Someone Having...if Not Died, Then Having Given Up Her Life. It Wasn't Fair. "life's Not Fair," Said Ginnie, As If I Had Spoken Aloud.

And Sometimes When You Fall... You Fly...

On The Whole, Stories Don't Write Themselves.

And Then It Went, And Time Passed Properly Once More, Every Second Following Every Other Second Just Like They're Meant To.

For Some, It Was Easier To Take The Leap From The Leafless Tree And Dance On Nothing Until Dancing Was Done.

Coraline Shivered. She Preferred Her Other Mother To Have A Location: If She Were Nowhere, Then She Could Be Anywhere. And, After All, It Is Always Easier To Be Afraid Of Something You Cannot See.

Whereas There Are Lots Of Good Novels Out There; There Are A Few Good Movies Out There. People Have Been Writing Great Poems For Years, But There Aren't A Lot Of Good Comics. I Like Trying To Write Them.

Have Been Unavoidably Detained By The World. Expect Us When You See Us.

If It's True That Every Seven Years Each Cell In Your Body Dies And Is Replaced, Then I Have Truly Inherited My Life From A Dead Man; And The Misdeeds Of Those Times Have Been Forgiven, And Are Buried With His Bones.

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

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