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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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Every Now And Then

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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I Learned To Write By Writing.

Traveling Through The Dragon's Den, It Has Just Been Explained That Haroun, The Ifrit, Has Been Caught In A Mirror Trap. Here Is The Passage That Follows: "so," Said Silas. "now There Are Only Three Of Us." "and A Pig," Said Kandar [the Mummy] "why?" Asked Miss Lupescu, With A Wolf-tongue, Through Wolf Teeth. "why The Pig?" "it's Lucky," Said Kandar. Miss Lupescu Growled, Unconvinced. "did Haroun Have A Pig?" Asked Kandar, Simply.

Being A Writer Is A Very Peculiar Sort Of A Job: It's Always You Versus A Blank Sheet Of Paper (or A Blank Screen) And Quite Often The Blank Piece Of Paper Wins.

He Was Having More Fun Than A Barrelful Of Monkeys.* *several Years Earlier Spider Had Actually Been Tremendously Disappointed By A Barrelful Of Monkeys. It Had Done Nothing He Had Considered Particularly Entertaining, Apart From Emit Interesting Noises, And Eventually, Once The Noises Had Stopped And The Monkeys Were No Longer Doing Anything At All—except Possibly On An Organic Level—had Needed To Be Disposed Of In The Dead Of Night.

I've Known Ambitious People With No Aptitude For The Thing They Did. Most Of Whom, Rather Terrifyingly, Tended To Succeed.

I Sat In The Dark And Thought: There’s No Big Apocalypse. Just An Endless Procession Of Little Ones.

The Best Thing About Writing Fiction Is That Moment Where The Story Catches Fire And Comes To Life On The Page, And Suddenly It All Makes Sense And You Know What It's About And Why You're Doing It And What These People Are Saying And Doing, And You Get To Feel Like Both The Creator And The Audience. Everything Is Suddenly Both Obvious And Surprising ("but Of Course That's Why He Was Doing That, And That Means That...") And It's Magic And Wonderful And Strange.

Normally, In Anything I Do, I'm Fairly Miserable. I Do It, And I Get Grumpy Because There Is A Huge, Vast Gulf, This Aching Disparity, Between The Platonic Ideal Of The Project That Was Living In My Head, And The Small, Sad, Wizened, Shaking, Squeaking Thing That I Actually Produce.

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.

It Is Said That Scattered Through Despair's Domain Are A Multitude Of Tiny Windows, Hanging In The Void. Each Window Looks Out Onto A Different Scene, Being, In Our World, A Mirror. Sometimes You Will Look Into A Mirror And Feel The Eyes Of Despair Upon You, Feel Her Hook Catch And Snag On Your Heart.

Richard Did Not Believe In Angels, He Never Had. He Was Damned If He Was Going To Start Now. Still, It Was Much Easier Not To Believe In Something When It Was Not Actually Looking Directly At You And Saying Your Name.

There Are Accounts That, If We Open Our Hearts To Them, Will Cut Us Too Deeply.

A Life That Is, Like Any Other, Unlike Any Other.

In Order For Stories To Work - For Kids And For Adults - They Should Scare. And You Should Triumph. There's No Point In Triumphing Over Evil If The Evil Isn't Scary.

It Would Have Been Hard For Fat Charlie To Say Exactly When The Accumulation Of Birds On The Wire Mesh Moved From Interesting To Terrifying. It Was Somewhere In The First Hundred Or So, Anyway. And It Was In The Way They Didn't Coo, Or Caw, Or Trill, Or Song. They Simply Landed On The Wire, And They Watched Him.

I Do Not Permit Affection Or Lack Thereof To Influence My Actions. There Is Good, And There Is Evil. The Good Must Be Protected, The Evil Eradicated. I Have Shown You The Triumph Of Evil As A Caution.

Trust Dreams. Trust Your Heart, And Trust Your Story.

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.

Chow^tm Contained Spun, Plaited, And Woven Protein Molecules, Capped And Coded, Carefully Designed To Be Ignored By Even The Most Ravenous Digestive Tract Enzymes; No-cal Sweeteners; Mineral Oils Replacing Vegetable Oils; Fibrous Materials, Colorings, And Flavorings. The End Result Was A Foodstuff Almost Indistinguishable From Any Other Except For Two Things. Firstly, The Price, Which Was Slightly Higher, And Secondly, The Nutritional Content, Which Was Roughly Equivalent To That Of A Sony Walkman.

You’re Alive. That Means You Have Infinite Potential. You Can Do Anything, Make Anything, Dream Anything.

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

All Cats Can See Futures, And See Echoes Of The Past. We Can Watch The Passage Of Creatures From The Infinity Of Now, From All The Worlds Like Ours, Only Fractionally Different. And We Follow Them With Our Eyes, Ghost Things, And The Humans See Nothing.

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.

This Is A Book For Every Fiddler Who Has Realized Halfway Through Playing An Ancient Scottish Air That The Ramones "i Wanna Be Sedated" Is What Folk Music Is Really All About, And Gone Straight Into It.

Mr. Vandemar Showed Them His Teeth, Demonstrating His Sunny And Delightful Disposition. It Was Unquestionably The Most Horrible Thing Richard Had Ever Seen.

How Old Are You?" Asked Door. Richard Was Pleased She Had Asked; He Would Never Have Dared. "as Old As My Tongue," Said Hunter, Primly, "and A Little Older Than My Teeth.

Soon Enough His Head Would Be Swimming With Tales Of Derring-do And High Adventure, Tales Of Beautiful Maidens Kissed, Of Evildoers Shot With Pistols Or Fought With Swords, Of Bags Of Gold, Of Diamonds As Big As The Tip Of Your Thumb, Of Lost Cities And Of Vast Mountains, Of Steam-trains And Clipper Ships, Of Pampas, Oceans, Deserts, Tundra.

Writing Imaginative Tales For The Young Is Like Sending Coals To Newcastle. For Coals.

For Me, I Would Rather Read A Good Book, From A Contented Author. I Don't Really Care What It Takes To Produce That.

He Had Had A Severe Shock Some Weeks Earlier, When, Having Narrowly Failed To Capture A Large Grey-brown Hare For His Dinner, It Had Stopped At The Edge Of The Forest, Looked At Him With Disdain, And Said, 'well, I Hope You're Proud Of Yourself, That's All,' And Had Scampered Off Into The Long Grass

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.

If I Were Only Allowed To Read Or Enjoy Art Or Listen To Music Made By People Whose Opinions And Beliefs Were The Same As Mine, I Think The World Would Be A Pretty Dismal Sort Of A Place.

Start Telling The Stories That Only You Can Tell, Because There'll Always Be Better Writers Than You And There'll Always Be Smarter Writers Than You. There Will Always Be People Who Are Much Better At Doing This Or Doing That - But You Are The Only You.

Nobody Died. How Can You Kill An Idea? How Can You Kill The Personification Of An Action?" "then What Died? Who Are You Mourning?" "a Point Of View.

It's A Given That We Exist In A World Where We Have To Live In Continuity Every Day; No One Is Immune To That, In Life Or Romance Novels. By The Same Token, It's Not Something I Find Terribly Important.

There Are Little Pockets Of Old Time In London, Where Things And Places Stay The Same, Like Bubble In Amber.

Life Is Always Going To Be Stranger Than Fiction, Because Fiction Has To Be Convincing, And Life Doesn't.

The Best Way To Show People True Things Is From A Direction That They Had Not Imagined The Truth Coming.

Spiders' Webs Only Have To Be Large Enough To Catch Flies.

I Like 'pencil-necked Weasel'. It Has 'pencil' In It. Pencils Are Good Things. You Can Draw Or Write Things With Pencils. I Think It's What You Call Someone When You're Worried That Using A Long Word Like 'intellectual' May Have Too Many Syllables. It's Not Something That People Who Have Serious, Important Things To Say Call Other People.

Someone Killed My Mother And My Father And My Sister?" "yes, Someone Did." "a Man?" "a Man." "which Means," Said Bod, "you're Asking The Wrong Question." Silas Raised An Eyebrow. "how So?" "well," Said Bod. "if I Go Outside In The World, The Question Isn't Who Will Keep Me Safe From Him?" "no?" "no. It's Who Will Keep Him Safe From Me?

On The First Day Coraline's Family Moved In, Miss Spink And Miss Forcible Made A Point Of Telling Coraline How Dangerous The Well Was, And They Warned Her To Be Sure She Kept Away From It. So Coraline Set Off To Explore For It, So That She Knew Where It Was, To Keep Away From It Properly.

When You Start Out On A Career In The Arts You Have No Idea What You Are Doing. This Is Great. People Who Know What They Are Doing Know The Rules, And Know What Is Possible And Impossible. You Do Not. And You Should Not. The Rules On What Is Possible And Impossible In The Arts Were Made By People Who Had Not Tested The Bounds Of The Possible By Going Beyond Them. And You Can. If You Don't Know It's Impossible It's Easier To Do. And Because Nobody's Done It Before, They Haven't Made Up Rules To Stop Anyone Doing That Again, Yet.

Possible And Impossible

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.

As For Thinking Time Versus Writing Time, Well, That's Up To You. But - And I Wish It Were Otherwise - Books Don't Get Written By Thinking About Them, They Get Written By Writing Them. And That's When You Make Discoveries About What You're Writing. That's When You Get The Happy Accidents.

The Things That Really Change The World, According To Chaos Theory, Are The Tiny Things. A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings In The Amazonian Jungle, And Subsequently A Storm Ravages Half Of Europe.

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.

Anyone Who Believes What A Cat Tells Him Deserves All He Gets.

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

I Do Not Miss Childhood, But I Miss The Way I Took Pleasure In Small Things, Even As Greater Things Crumbled. I Could Not Control The World I Was In, Could Not Walk Away From Things Or People Or Moments That Hurt, But I Took Joy In The Things That Made Me Happy.

Idris: Are All People Like This? The Doctor: Like What? Idris: So Much Bigger On The Inside.

Really, He Thought, If You Couldn't Trust A Poet To Offer Sensible Advice, Who Could You Trust?

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.

However You Must Have Sensed A Lurking 'but' Skulking Beneath My Happy, Blithe, And Chipper Exterior. A Minuscule Vexation, Like The Teeniest Lump Of Raw Liver Sticking To The Inside Of My Boot.

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

Are You Scared?’ Asked Mr. Ibis. ‘not Really.’ ‘well, Try To Cultivate The Emotions Of True Awe And Spiritual Terror, As We Walk. They Are The Appropriate Feelings For The Situation At Hand.

Have You Ever Had One Of Those Days When Something Just Seems To Be Trying To Tell You Somebody?

One Of Those Days

There Were Faces At The Windows And Words Written In Blood; Deep In The Crypt A Lonely Ghoul Crunched On Something That Might Once Have Been Alive; Forked Lightnings Slashed The Ebony Night; The Faceless Were Walking; All Was Right With The World

Let Her Tell Stories And Dance In The Rain, Somersault, Tumble And Run, Her Joys Must Be High As Her Sorrows Are Deep, Let Her Grow Like A Weed In The Sun.

People Are Icebergs. So Much Of Us Is Underneath.

Sometimes The Best Way To Learn Something Is By Doing It Wrong And Looking At What You Did.

I'm A Fairly Undisciplined Writer.

I Hope You Will Have A Wonderful Year, That You'll Dream Dangerously And Outrageously, That You'll Make Something That Didn't Exist Before You Made It, That You Will Be Loved And That You Will Be Liked, And That You Will Have People To Love And To Like In Return. And, Most Importantly (because I Think There Should Be More Kindness And More Wisdom In The World Right Now), That You Will, When You Need To Be, Be Wise, And That You Will Always Be Kind.

You Don’t Want To Ask After The Health Of Anyone, If You’re A Funeral Director. They Think Maybe You’re Scouting For Business.

I Don't Know If Proud Is The Right Word, But I Am Somebody Who Does Not, On The Whole, Have The Highest Regard For My Own Stuff In That When I Look All I Get To See Are The Flaws.

I'm Never, I Hope, Stupid Enough To Believe That Twitter Or Blogging Or Any Of This Stuff Is A Substitute For Actually Doing The Work Or Writing A Book.

On The Whole, Stories Don't Write Themselves.

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.

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.

Remember That, Sooner Or Later, Before It Ever Reaches Perfection, You Will Have To Let It Go And Move On And Start To Write The Next Thing. Perfection Is Like Chasing The Horizon. Keep Moving.

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.

We Owe It To Each Other To Tell Stories.

Notoriety Wasn't As Good As Fame, But Was Heaps Better Than Obscurity.

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

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.

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.

It's Always Too Late For Sorries, But I Appreciate The Sentiment.

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.

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.

Now You People Have Names. That's Because You Don't Know Who You Are. We Know Who We Are, So We Don't Need Names.

Potentially Evil. Potentially Good, Too, I Suppose. Just This Huge Powerful Potentiality Waiting To Be Shaped.

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. All Of The Things That Shadow Had Done In His Life Of Which He Was Not Proud, All The Things He Wished He Had Done Otherwise Or Left Undone, Came At Him Then In A Swirling Storm Of Guilt And Regret And Shame, And He Had Nowhere To Hide From Them. He Was As Naked And As Open As A Corpse On A Table, And Dark Anubis The Jackal God Was His Prosector And His Prosecutor And His Persecutor.

In My Dream, It Was The Tongue Of What Is, And Anything Spoken In It Becomes Real, Because Nothing Said In That Language Can Be A Lie. It Is The Most Basic Building Brick Of Everything.

Books Are The Way That We Communicate With The Dead. The Way That We Learn Lessons From Those Who Are No Longer With Us, That Humanity Has Built On Itself, Progressed, Made Knowledge Incremental Rather Than Something That Has To Be Relearned, Over And Over. There Are Tales That Are Older Than Most Countries, Tales That Have Long Outlasted The Cultures And The Buildings In Which They Were First Told.

I Decided That I Would Do My Best In The Future Not To Write Books Just For Money. If You Didn't Get The Money Then You Didn't Have Anything. If I Did The Work I Was Proud Of And I Didn't Get The Money, At Least I'd Have The Work.

It's Easier To Lie To Yourself When You Say Things Out Loud.

But Surely "argh" Is The Sound Of A Sort Of Strangulated Scream. "aargh" Is The Sound Of A Stabbing, Or A Falling Off A Cliff. "arr" Is, I Think, The Noise You're Looking For. It's The Noise Pirates Make When They Don't Have Anything Better To Do. "arr, Jim Lad" = Pirate Noise. "aargh, Jim Lad" = Sound Of Pirate Falling Off A Cliff.

I Liked Myths. They Weren't Adult Stories And They Weren't Children Stories. They Were Better Than That. They Just Were. Adult Stories Never Made Sense, And They Were Slow To Start. They Made Me Feel Like There Were Secrets, Masonic, Mythic Secrets, To Adulthood. Why Didn't Adults Want To Read About Narnia, About Secret Islands And Smugglers And Dangerous Fairies?

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

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

Have You Ever Been In Love? Horrible Isn't It? It Makes You So Vulnerable. It Opens Your Chest And It Opens Up Your Heart And It Means That Someone Can Get Inside You And Mess You Up.

You Musn’t Be Afraid Of The Dark.’ ‘i’m Not,’ Said Shadow. ‘i’m Afraid Of The People In The Dark.

The Real World Has No Obligation To Be Convincing, So It Throws Up Some Very Weird Moments Sometimes.

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

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.

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.

All Good Technology Should Be Used To Piss Off People's Parents.

Sister Mary Chose That Moment To Come In With The Tea. Satanist Or Not, She'd Also Found A Plate And Arranged Some Iced Biscuits On It.

What Need, Dunstan Wondered, Could Someone Have Of The Storm-filled Eggshells?

I Wonder If I Shall Ever See Her Again, And I Realize That I Scarcely Care. I Can Feel The Sheets Beneath Me, And The Cold Air On My Chest. I Feel Fine. I Feel Absolutely Fine. I Feel Nothing At All.

Libraries Are The Thin Red Line Between Civilization And Barbarism.

A Good Writer Should Be Able To Write Comedic Work That Made You Laugh, And Scary Stuff That Made You Scared, And Fantasy Or Science Fiction That Imbued You With A Sense Of Wonder, And Mainstream Journalism That Gave You Clear And Concise Information In A Way That You Wanted It.

If The Same Object From Two Different Times Touches Itself, One Of Two Things Will Happen. Either The Universe Will Cease To Exist. Or Three Remarkable Dwarfs Will Dance Through The Streets With Flowerpots On Their Heads.

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

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

Carbon Footprint

You Could Fire A Machine Gun Randomly Through The Pages Of Lord Of The Rings And Never Hit Any Women.

Richard Wondered How The Marquis Managed To Make Being Pushed Around In A Wheelchair Look Like A Romantic And Swashbuckling Thing To Do.

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.

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

Also, I've Already Won All The Awards.

Anywhere That I Can't Check My Email Is A Good Place To Write!

I Hope You Read Some Fine Books And Kiss Someone Who Thinks You're Wonderful.

It's Just I Might Get Distracted, And I Get Lost Kind Of Easily, And Sometimes I Have Really Bad Days...when, You Know, I Just Want To Hide Or Scream Or Bleed Or Something, And...all That...

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.

I Guess It's Just Another One Of Life's Little Mysteries." "i'm Tired Of Mysteries." "yeah? I Think They Add A Kind Of Zest To The World. Like Salt In A Stew.

Sometimes An Old Idea Gets Relegated To The Back Of The Line In The Mad Delight Of A New Idea, One You've Never Had Before, And That You Write Fast In The Thrill Of The New. No Rules. Just Stories, And You Tell As Many Of Them As You Can.

In Film, A Lot Of The Time You're Not As Engaged, It Is All Being Given To You, And You're Accepting It As It Comes In, But In Comics, As A Reader, You Are Going To Have To Work, Your Imagination Needs To Do An Awful Lot.

The Cartoon Me Writes The Books Cartoon People Read In The Cartoon World, Because They Need Things To Read There Too.

Every Lover Is, In His Heart, A Madman, And, In His Head, A Minstrel.

Watch Out For That Pedestrian!" "it's On The Street, It Knows The Risks It's Taking!

It's Certainly Not Too Late To Change To The Winning Side. But You Know, You Also Have The Freedom To Stay Just Where You Are. That's What It Means To Be An American. That's The Miracle Of America. Freedom To Believe Means The Freedom To Believe The Wrong Thing, After All. Just As Freedom Of Speech Gives You The Right To Stay Silent.

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

Not Only Are There No Happy Endings,' She Told Him, 'there Aren't Even Any Endings.

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.

Some Of Us Claim That He Was A Messiah, And Some Think That He Was Just A Man With Very Special Powers. But That Misses The Point. Whatever He Was, He Changed The World.

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.

You Know How Is It When You Love Someone? And The Hard Part, The Bad Part, The Jerry Springer Show Part Is That You Never Stop Loving Someone. There's Always A Piece Of Them In Your Heart.

When You Love Someone

If Ever You Get To Be My Age," Said The Old Woman, "you Will Know All There Is To Know About Regrets, And You Will Know That One More, Here Or There, Will Make No Difference In The Long Run.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

I Don't Know Why People Would Want To Have Lunch With Writers. I've Eaten With Writers. We Have Appalling Table Manners, And Rarely Say Anything Other Than 'pass The Salt' Or 'if You're Not Going To Eat That, Can I Have It?'

Anything That Keeps You Happy And Writing Is Part Of My Writing Ritual: I Like Music, So I Tend To Have It Playing In The Background. But If I'm Interested, I Can Write In An Airport Waiting Areas.

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.

So That's My Wish For You, And All Of Us, And My Wish For Myself. Make New Mistakes. Make Glorious, Amazing Mistakes. Make Mistakes Nobody's Ever Made Before. Don't Freeze, Don't Stop, Don't Worry That It Isn't Good Enough, Or It Isn't Perfect, Whatever It Is: Art, Or Love, Or Work Or Family Or Life.

You Can Tell The Date Of An Old Science Fiction Novel By Every Word On The Page. Nothing Dates Harder And Faster And More Strangely Than The Future.

I Asked Him If It Were A Mirage, And He Said Yes. I Said It Was A Dream, And He Agreed, But Said It Was The Desert's Dream Not His. And He Told Me That In A Year Or So, When He Had Aged Enough For Any Man, Then He Would Walk Into The Wind, Until He Saw The Tents. This Time, He Said, He Would Go On With Them.

Monsters Come In All Shapes And Sizes, Some Of Them Are Things People Are Scared Of. Some Of Them Are Things That Look Like Things People Used To Be Scared Of A Long Time Ago. Sometimes Monsters Are Things People Should Be Scared Of, But They Aren't.

It Seems To Me That One Of The Most Interesting Things About God As A Concept, If You Decide To Believe In God, Is That God's Ways Are Unknowable. And God Obviously, Look At The World Around You, Does Or Is Responsible For Some Terrible, Terrible, Awful Things. A Young Girl Kidnapped And Kept In The Darkness And Sexually Abused. The Deaths Of Six Million Jews. A Mudslide That Buries A Village. All Of These Things. If God Is Doing The Good Stuff, He's Got To Be Doing That Stuff Too.

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.

I Thought About Moving South, About Continuing To Run, Continuing To Pretend I Was Alive. But It Was, I Knew Now, Much Too Late For That. There Are Doors, After All, Between The Living And The Dead, And They Swing In Both Directions.

I Think Radio Plays Are My Favourite Medium, As They Make The Listener Work And Create And Contribute In A Way That Tv And Film Can Never Do, And They Have An Immediacy That Written Prose Often Lacks.

If You Don't Know It's Impossible It's Easier To Do.

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

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.

I Finally Made Friends With My Father When I Entered My Twenties. We Had So Little In Common When I Was A Boy, And I Am Certain I Had Been A Disappointment To Him. He Did Not Ask For A Child With A Book, Off In Its Own World. He Wanted A Son Who Did What He Had Done; Swam And Boxed And Played Rugby, And Drove Cars At Speed With Abandon And Joy, But That Was Not What He Wound Up With.

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.

Adults Should Not Weep, I Knew. They Did Not Have Mothers Who Would Comfort Them.

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

There Are Little Pockets Of Old Time In London, Where Things And Places Stay The Same, Like Bubbles In Amber,” She Explained. “there’s A Lot Of Time In London, And It Has To Go Somewhere—it Doesn’t All Get Used Up At Once.” “i May Still Be Hung Over,” Sighed Richard. “that Almost Made Sense.

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.

China Was The Most Optimistic Place I'd Ever Been. Everybody I Met Was Pretty Much Convinced That Their Children Would Have It Better Than Their Parents Had Had It. It Was Like Being In America In The 1950's, With This Deep Optimism About The Future Because Everything Was Getting Better, And That Fascinated Me.

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.

What Power Would Hell Have If Those Imprisoned Were Not Able To Dream Of Heaven?

Television And Cinema Were All Very Well, But These Stories Happened To Other People. The Stories I Found In Books Happened Inside My Head. I Was, In Some Way, There. It's The Magic Of Fiction: You Take The Words And You Build Them Into Worlds.

A Philosopher Once Asked, "are We Human Because We Gaze At The Stars, Or Do We Gaze At Them Because We Are Human?" Pointless, Really..."do The Stars Gaze Back?" Now That's A Question.

You Can Take For Granted That People Know More Or Less What A Street, A Shop, A Beach, A Sky, An Oak Tree Look Like. Tell Them What Makes This One Different.

He Had Read Books, Newspapers And Magazines. He Knew That If You Ran Away You Sometimes Met Bad People Who Did Bad Things To You; But He Had Also Read Fairy Tales, So He Knew That There Were Kind People Out There, Side By Side With The Monsters.

It's Easier To Believe In Aliens Than In Gods.

Call No Man Happy, Said Shadow, Until He Is Dead

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.

If You Only Write When Inspired, You May Be A Fairly Decent Poet, But You'll Never Be A Novelist.

While Clothes Do Not, As The Saying Would Sometimes Have It, Make The Man, And Fine Feathers Do Not Make Fine Birds, Sometimes They Can Add A Certain Spice To A Recipe.

'doctor Who' Was The First Mythology That I Learned, Before Ever I Ran Into Greek Or Roman Or Egyptian Mythologies.

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.

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.

And If There's A Moral There, I Don't Know What It Is, Save Maybe That We Should Take Our Goodbyes Whenever We Can.

I Don't Think You Should Ever Insult People Unintentionally: If You're Doing It, You Ought To Mean It.

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 Book Is A Dream That You Hold In Your Hands.

You Can Buy A Book New, Buy It In Hardback Or Wait For The Paperback, Find It Used Or As A Collectible. I Don't Mind. What I Care About Most Is That People Are Reading.

There Are Only Two Worlds - Your World, Which Is The Real World, And Other Worlds, The Fantasy. Worlds Like This Are Worlds Of The Human Imagination: Their Reality, Or Lack Of Reality, Is Not Important. What Is Important Is That They Are There. These Worlds Provide An Alternative. Provide An Escape. Provide A Threat. Provide A Dream, And Power; Provide Refuge, And Pain. They Give Your World Meaning. They Do Not Exist; And Thus They Are All That Matters.

You Are Young, And In Love. Every Young Man In Your Position Is The Most Miserable Young Man Who Ever Lived.

Miserable Person

My Theory On Genre Is That While There Are People Out There Who Believe That Genre Tells People What To Read, Actually I Believe That Genre Exists As A Marketing Tool To Tell You What To Avoid.

Remember: When People Tell You Something’s Wrong Or Doesn’t Work For Them, They Are Almost Always Right. When They Tell You Exactly What They Think Is Wrong And How To Fix It, They Are Almost Always Wrong.

But I Have Always Thought That These Tulips Must Have Had Names. They Were Red, And Orange And Red, And Red And Orange And Yellow, Like The Ember In A Nursery Fire Of A Winter's Evening. I Remember Them.

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

He Told Me Not To Seek Revenge, But To Seek The Buddha,' Said The Fox Spirit, Sadly. 'wise Counsel,' Said The Fox Of Dreams. 'vegeance Can Be A Road That Has No Ending. You Would Be Wise To Avoid It. And...?' 'i Shall Seek The Buddha,' Said The Fox, With A Toss Of Her Head. 'but First I Shall Seek Revenge.

We Make Choices. No One Else Can Live Our Lives For Us. And We Must Confront And Accept The Consequences Of Our Actions.

Richard Opened His Hand, And The Key Stared Up At Him From His Palm. "by My Crooked Teeth," Asked Richard, Remembering, "who Am I?

You Think You're Being Given All Of These Things: Phones That Can Communicate With Other Devices, Car Service That's Better Than A Taxi, All Of These Amazing Things That Are Available To You At Any Time. It Isn't Until You've Swum Across The River That You Can Start To See The Negative Aspects Of It All.

"where Do You Get Your Ideas?" That's The One Question I'm Genuinely Sick Of Being Asked, And Also Genuinely Fascinated By. What Fascinates Me Is Not That People Ask The Question, But What Kind Of Answer Are They Really Looking For? Because If I Tell Them The Truth, Which Is "i Make Them Up," They Seem Very Disappointed. They Want To Know About The Trek I Do Once A Year To The Mountain.

Every Hour Wounds. The Last One Kills.

Why Does She Want Me?" Coraline Asked The Cat. "why Does She Want Me To Stay Here With Her?" "she Wants Something To Love, I Think," Said The Cat. "something That Isn't Her. She Might Want Something To Eat As Well. It's Hard To Tell With Creatures Like That.

I Think There Are Several Aspects Of Our Marraige We're Going To Have To Work On." "babes," He Told Her. "you're Dead." "that's One Of Those Aspects, Obviously.

Making Fiction For Children, Making Books For Children, Isn't Something You Do For Money. It's Something You Do Because What Children Read And Learn And See And Take In Changes Them And Forms Them, And They Make The Future. They Make The World We're Going To Wind Up In, The World That Will Be Here When We're Gone. Which Sounds Preachy (and Is More Than You Need For A Quotebyte) But It's True. I Want To Tell Kids Important Things, And I Want Them To Love Stories And Love Reading And Love Finding Things Out. I Want Them To Be Brave And Wise. So I Write For Them.

For Love Is No Part Of The Dreamworld. Love Belongs To Desire, And Desire Is Always Cruel.

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

I Told You I Would Tell You My Names. This Is What They Call Me. I'm Called Glad-of-war, Grim, Raider, And Third. I Am One-eyed. I Am Called Highest, And True-guesser. I Am Grimnir, And I Am The Hooded One. I Am All-father, And I Am Gondlir Wand-bearer. I Have As Many Names As There Are Winds, As Many Titles As There Are Ways To Die. My Ravens Are Huginn And Muninn, Thought And Memory; My Wolves Are Freki And Geri; My Horse Is The Gallows.

Some People Have Great Ideas Maybe Once Or Twice In Their Life, And Then They Discover Electricity Or Fire Or Outer Space Or Something. I Mean, The Kind Of Brilliant Ideas That Change The Whole World. Some People Never Have Them At All... I Get Them Two Or Three Times A Week.

"only Write What You Know" Is Very Good Advice. I Do My Best To Stick To It. I Wrote About Gods And Dreams And America Because I Knew About Them. And I Wrote About What It's Like To Wander Into Faerie Because I Knew About That. I Wrote About Living Underneath London Because I Knew About That Too. And I Put People Into The Stories Because I Knew Them: The Ones With Pumpkins For Heads, And The Serial Killers With Eyes For Teeth, And The Little Chocolate People Filled With Raspberry Cream And The Rest Of Them.

It Seemed To Coraline That It Was Crouching, And Staring Down At Her, As If It Were Not Really A House But Only The Idea Of A House—and The Person Who Had Had The Idea, She Was Certain, Was Not A Good Person.

Diana Used To Tell Me She Had A Travel Jinx, Something I Only Really Started To Believe When The Plane Door Fell Off.

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

Recounting The Strange Is Like Telling One's Dreams: One Can Communicate The Events Of A Dream, But Not The Emotional Content, The Way That A Dream Can Colour One's Entire Day.

One Of The Great Things About Humor Is, You Can Slip Things Past People With Humor, You Can Use It As A Sweetener. So You Can Actually Tell Them Things, Give Them Messages, Get Terribly, Terribly Serious And Terribly, Terribly Dark, And Because There Are Jokes In There, They'll Go Along With You, And They'll Travel A Lot Further Along With You Than They Would Otherwise.

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.

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